Halloween Costumes With An SFX Twist

With Halloween upon us, it’s time to start thinking about costumes! You may have been planning your costume for months now and already know exactly what you’ll dress up as, and you may have even considered putting an SFX twist on it! Halloween is the perfect time of year to breakout the FX supplies and practice making some gory wounds!

1. Little Red Riding Hood Attacked By The Big Bad Wolf

This would be a fun 2-part costume if you have multiple Halloween events to go to in one day. You can easily start with the classic Little Red Riding Hood look and then, later on, create gorey, ripped open wounds on your face, neck, and/or chest that resemble claw marks as if Little Red got into a tussle with the Big Bad Wolf, barely escaping with her life. 

The best way to achieve these gory wounds that hold up for several hours if you’re at a party or trick-or-treating is to use cotton and liquid latex.  Provided is a tutorial on these techniques. Red Riding Hood Halloween Tutorial

2. Pirate Missing An Eye

Sure you can just do a typical pirate costume ala eye-patch, but a character like this is begging for an SFX makeover. What better way than to use (safe) FX prosthetics to hollow out your eyeball socket! You can also use the tissue and liquid latex or rigid collodion with 3rd Degree to create scarring on the face, because if you’re pirate who was in battle where he lost his eye, he probably walked away with some other facial wounds. Here is a tutorial on how to create missing eyes

• When using prosthetics, skin-safe adhesives and makeup near your eyes, be sure not to actually hollow out your eye. People end up in the ER on Halloween for all sorts of reasons, let’s not be one of them, thanks.

3. Witch

There are endless ways to dress up as a witch and if all you feel like doing is wearing a pointed hat there is nothing wrong with that. However, witches are an ideal character to be when wanting to go all ham with the SFX route. Because there are so many variations on witches here are some tutorials to give you ideas of the direction to take your witch. 

Ellimacs Witch Tutorial

Frost Witch Tutorial

Or if you’re feeling a little wicked here is Glam&Gore’s melted Wicked Witch of the West tutorial

4.  Princess Gone Wrong

You’ve probably have seen many renditions of a gory Disney princess from Belle being attacked by the Beast to Snow White being poisoned by the apple, or Ariel being hooked. Glam&Gore has a whole series of Disney Princess FX tutorials including a frostbitten Elsa and a tangled…er more like strangled by her own hair, Rapunzel. Here is Glam&Gore’s tutorial on a Burnt Belle to break up the banal tragic Disney princess alternative stories: Burnt Belle (Beauty & The Beast) Tutorial 

5. Bloody Masque

If you’re wanting to go in the direction of masquerade ball (maybe you’re even attending a masquerade themed party), then this makeup is perfect! You’ll want to employ the cotton and latex techniques for this as well to create the shape of masquerade mask, but in the form of a bloody wound. Consider carrying a mask on a stick with you and holding it up to your face, doing a big reveal of your makeup at the party! 

Here is Bonnie Corban’s bloody masquerade tutorial to help: Masquerade Flesh Mask Tutorial

6. The Joker With A Chelsea Grin

One of the most icon traits of The Clown Prince of Crime are his scars along the corners of his mouth, known as a Chelsea Grin or Glasgow Smile. Try the Joker makeup and costume but instead of simply creating scars or using lipstick to paint a smile create, open, gaping wounds. Then everyone will know how you got those scars. 

There are several tutorials to show you how to achieve the Chelsea Grin, and other tutorials to show you how to the Joker makeup. 

Chelsea Grin Tutorial

Will you be trying any of these Halloween costumes with an SFX twist this year? Let us know in the comments below!

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