NuVein Magazine’s January issue has an extraordinary article about make-up artist Ve Neill called The Many Faces of Fantasy written by Scott Essman. Neill, who specializes in prosthetic makeups and unique character and beauty makeups, has been doing landmark makeup for films such as The Lost Boys, Beetlejuice, Dick Tracy, Ed Wood, Batman Forever, Cobb, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Mrs. Doubtfire for over 20 years and has won 3 Academy Awards (Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, & Mrs. Doubtfire).
In a short excerpt from the article, here’s what Ve Neill had so say about working with Johnny on the film Edward Scissorhands…
“I think Johnny Depp really had a great deal to do with bringing that character to life. He really brought some heart and soul to it. It could have been on anybody and somebody else might have done it completely differently, but he was really great in that role. Even though Johnny spoke very little, he could really sell that empathetic character. It was really neat project to work on. Ultimately, Tim Burton designed the character, so Stan Winston and I just brought it to life. Stan had designed the makeup and I remember the first test we did. I think we basically used the forehead piece that was designed and then he had sheets of different types of scars. I just started putting scars into different areas. We just moved scars around and then of course there was the one that went through his lip which I actually put on with scar material, so it had to be constructed every day. Matthew Mungle, who was my assistant, took the vacuum form pieces of Johnny’s face and he made a stencil so everyday we knew exactly where to put the little scars – we had them all numbered.
Edward was supposed to real innocent, so I gave him a look almost like a clown makeup. One of my favorite colors has a real pale kind of a slightly grayish, yellow cast to it, Tuttle Shibui – that was the basic foundation. Around his eyes were charcoal and purple. On that character, I would change the configuration of the darkness around his eyes depending on the scene. It is real subtle, but you can sort of tell if you took stills of it and put them next to each other. At the end of the picture when he kills Anthony Michael Hall, I painted Edward’s eyes. All of the lead characters in Tim’s films have the Tim Burton look because that is the way he draws all of his characters: with pale faces and black circles around the eyes. Tim loves that; it is his signature.”
This is an article excerpt. To view the article in full, please click on the hyperlink above.
