I have to be honest. Prior to this year’s Monsterpalooza,
held on March 27th thru March 29th, the only conventions I had ever been to was
the small, but lively Bellingham, WA Comic Con and the Western Washington
University’s science fiction
themed Viking Con…and I was present
at both of those only because I was a panelist.
Genre conventions have never held much appeal for me…I generally dislike
large crowds and my genre interests are very narrow. I’m not much interested in comic books
and super heroes and I’ve always felt that
the artificial meeting of “celebrities” in a convention
atmosphere was weird, awkward and intrusive.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not knocking
people who enjoy these things…I’m just not one of
them. My thing has always been
MONSTERS. As a child, they were my
friends…as an adult I make
a meager living out of making them. So,
with that in mind, I guess it makes perfect sense that my first real, big
convention would be something called Monsterpalooza.
Eliot
Brodsky first put on an event on the East Coast in 2008 called Maskpalooza,
which gave birth the following year to Monsterpalooza: The Art of Monsters, held in sunny Burbank,
California. The Burbank Marriott
Convention Center has been home to Monsterpalooza every year since, as well as
The Son Of Monsterpalooza, held in September for the past few years. It is important to note the subtitle of the
event, The
Art of Monsters,
as that truly describes what proved to be one of the most amazing events I’ve ever been
to.
With
gas prices down, it proved to be cheaper to drive down from my home town on the
Washington State / Canadian border, rather than fly. More than once, I was told that I was crazy
at the convention, but actually, the 18 hour drive wasn’t that bad. I was very excited at the prospect of
going. After seeing photos from the past
several Monsterpaloozas, I knew I would either come away very inspired or I
would curl up in fetal position on the floor, sobbing, “I’ll never be that
good!” You know what they say: Artists are people with huge egos and
extremely low self esteem.
The
Burbank Marriott is perfectly positioned for a big event like this. The Bob Hope Airport is literally right
across the street and the I-5 runs right past it. This made it incredibly easy to get to and
traffic was also no problem.
Additionally, the Marriott itself was beautiful, with a great staff and
rooms. If you haven’t been and plan on
going, it is worth the expense of reserving a room at the Marriott itself. Not only does this make convention attendance
super convenient, but gives you more access to people, which we’ll talk about
later.
Technically,
I was going to the convention to work. I
wanted to gather some interviews, photos and tags for the various enterprises I
represent: The Bonus Material Podcast,
The Bleedingham Short Horror Film Festival and John Ikuma’s Stop Motion
Magazine. And, despite my previous
statement about meeting “celebrities,” I was greatly
looking forward to meeting some of my heroes:
the men and women who work behind the scenes, providing conceptual art
and Practical Effects to some of the greatest genre films. In the end, I was able accomplish some of
my mission, but I could have done so much more.
I found myself largely wandering around in slack-jawed amazement more often than not,
recognizing opportunities only after they had passed me by. This element of being “art struck” also contributed to
my losing an interview and a tag. As it
turns out, being awe-struck is not a good state to operate electronic recording
devices from.
The
convention center itself has over 20,000 square feet…but even with all
that space, the event spilled over into the hotel lobby itself, with most of
the celebrity signings taking place either in the large meeting spaces of the
hotel or a series of rooms located between the hotel and the convention
center. It’s a good thing too. While Friday evening was comfortable, the
Saturday crowd grew so large and loud that it was literally difficult to walk
or talk in the convention center itself.
As it turns out, a LOT of people love monsters! The celebrities booths were well attended as
well, with long lines of people waiting to get an autograph or a photo
from/with folks like Sybil Danning, Linda Blair, Sonny Chiba, Lance Henriksen,
Cloris Leachman, George Romero and many, many more. While I did not approach their booths, I did
have the pleasure of bumping into Linda Blair, Sara Karloff and the amazing
artist Basil Gogos at different times in the hotel lobby and had pleasant
conversations with all three of them.
There
was no wasted space in the center itself.
Over 200 vendors’ booths lined the
walls, selling everything from T-shirts and posters to original works of art to
the latest products for the Practical Effects artist. It is this, more than anything, that I love
about Monsterpalooza: It’s not just a
convention where collectors come to find old issues of Famous Monsters of
Filmland magazine (although you certainly could do that there)…more than that, it
is a trade show. If you are an
effects artist, this is the place for networking. It seemed that all the conversations around
me started with “I’m a makeup artist,
what do you do?” Filmmakers of all levels were walking
around, talking about current and future projects; business cards were being
flung with the ferocity of ninja throwing stars. It’s safe to say that several artists
came away with new gigs on their horizons.
Of
course there were homemade cosplay outfits scattered throughout, but even more
amazing were the subjects of various make up demonstrations, who, when
completely transformed, went out to wander and spread weirdness amongst the
crowd. It was a joy to see Cinema Makeup
School transform suit performer Mick Ignis into the beautiful Lunah’la, The Moon
Goddess and then watch men in the crowd gaze longingly at “her,” as she danced on
the convention floor. There were amazing
demos going on all the time, highlighting either makeup and prosthetic
products, schools and services or individual artists. Bruce Spaulding Fuller and Dave Woodruff
turned John Ames into a fantastic aquatic monster for European Body Art, the
PPI booth had demos by an entire roster of makeup artists, including Oscar
winner Greg Cannom, the Stan Winston School of Character Arts had a prosthetics
application demo by Joel Harlow, Adam Beane demonstrated the use of his
revolutionary sculpting material CX5, so on and so on.
Amazing
artists who had their own booths, either displaying or selling works of art and
signing lucky people up for classes included Casey Love, Jordu Schell, Norman
Cabrera, Chet Zar, Tim Gore, Steve Wang and so many more. Casey had his wide line of life-size and
miniature busts on display, Jordu was showing off a brilliant statue inspired
by the 9-11 attacks, Norman had a group of beautiful masks, Chet was surrounded
by his creepy paintings and a large sculpt called “Hearbroken,” Tim was painting
and displaying his group of disturbing horror props and Steve had a gallery of
some of his most beautiful works, including a Creature From The Black Lagoon
that might be the best I’ve ever seen. It was an amazing collection of some of the
greatest artists working today and they were all very approachable and really
seemed to appreciate their many fans and all the questions thrown at them.
Every
year, sculptor Mike Hill blows everyone away with one of his life-size (or
larger) silicone sculptures. This year
was no different, as he unveiled his interpretation of the classic Aurora Wolfman
model kit. This was one of those pieces
that you can stand inches from and still swear that it is absolutely alive.
Many
of these artists have been spotlighted teaching lessons for The Stan Winston
School of Character Arts, run by the son of the late, great Stan Winston,
Matt. It was extremely gratifying to
have Matt Winston come up and recognize me as one of the students of the
school. In my opinion, the efforts of
this school are largely responsible for the current popularity of practical
effects in general, and they have helped to make Monsterpalooza the success
that it is. Their booth was full of
projects from their various lessons, including two amazing Kaiju suits that
watched over the all the shenanigans, silently judging us all the while.
Some
of the most amazing things were to be found in the museum. From a large display honoring the late, great
Dick Smith to various Rick Baker props, it was all incredible to see
in person. Nick Marra had two
jaw-dropping pieces…a Walter White bust
that looks even more real than the live character (if that’s possible) and a
Yul Brynner WESTWORLD gunslinger, complete with an automated removal face
plate. Vincent Guastini’s VGP Effects and
Design had a whole section populated with a menagerie of aliens from a recent
project that made you feel as if you had entered a cantina in the STAR WARS
universe.
As
mentioned earlier, there were plenty of collectible and product vendors as
well. Shawn Lewis’s Rotten Cotton
Graphics stayed busy selling some of the coolest genre themed T-shirts one
could ever hope to find. Other booths
were selling T-shirts, books, dvds, posters, dolls, model kits, dioramas…you name it, it was
there.
Puppet
master Scott Land was in attendance, displaying his collection of celebrity caricature
marionettes. Right next to him was the
always amazing Chiodo Brothers, along with one of their incredibly life-like
baby dinosaurs, various Killer Klown themed items and an amazing genie
sculpture by Stephen Chiodo. If you see
him, ask him to explain the genie’s backstory…it’s awesome.
One
of the coolest things for me was simply running into many friends, some of whom
I only knew through Facebook or emails.
I had the honor of running into Fon Davis, who stopped and spoke to me
about his developing “mecha” project. I sat and had an entertaining conversation
with horror host Joe Flynn. I finally
got to meet one of my “bosses” in person, John
Ikuma, the publisher of Stop Motion Magazine, who was present with his lovely
daughter. Webster Colcord, animator of
everything from clay to pixels (and who is finishing up work on TED 2) spoke
with me for quite some time concerning stop motion, the industry and his past
jobs. It was a real pleasure to run into
my friend Garo Setian from Lions Gate Films and my buddy Ryan Banfield, even
Jerry Lentz all the way from Tennessee (and working on a cool documentary about
professional monster makers). James
Fairley from MastersFX hung out for a bit…I even ran into a couple of fellow
Washingtonians: Director of the WEEPERS
web series Thomas Tierney and The Twisted Beanstalk Nursery (from my home town, no less). It was wonderful seeing all these friends.
There
were many panels to attend, with the largest crowds drawn to The American
Horror Story panel and the Cinema Makeup School Face-Off Challenge…but two of my
favorite panels were the Tribute to Dick Smith and the Art of Creature and
Character Design panel. The Dick Smith
tribute panelists included the legendary Craig Reardon, Todd Masters from
MastersFX, ADI’s geniuses Alec
Ginnis and Tom Woodruff Jr., the amazing Kevin Haney and Andrew Clement, Linda
Blair and Stephen Lack, all of whom shared their wonderful memories and stories
of Dick Smith, the Godfather of modern special makeup effects. Dick’s caretaker in the latter years of his
life was Jill Rockow, whose efforts and emotional remembrances brought a
standing ovation from the audience. Matt
Winston moderated the Creature Design panel, which not only spotlighted Sandy
Collora’s new book on
creature design, but addressed character design in general, as discussed by
Sandy Collora, Steve Wang, Lee Joyner and Jordu Schell. They covered everything from the elements of
good design to why Hollywood doesn’t seem to be producing iconic creature
designs as it did in the past.
Unsurprisingly, it comes down to studio executives who really don’t know anything
about creativity or filmmaking, for that matter. The work on display certainly showed that
iconic designs are still being made…but the studios gut them before they
get to the screen. Designers like Sandy
Collora are combating this practice by making their projects, outside of the
studio system.
It
seems that every Monsterpalooza has a “star” for that particular year. For example, last year it was Alec Ginnis and
the buzz over his project HARBINGER DOWN.
This year, the “star” is undoubtedly
Sandy Collora. Sandy’s new Kickstarter
funded book THE ART OF CREATURE AND CHARACTER DESIGN was one of the fastest
moving products at the show. That,
coupled with the above mentioned panel AND a screening of BEHIND THE MASK, a
documentary about Sandy and his struggle to create projects entirely under his
control, helped to make Sandy the stand-out in this year’s convention. Sandy proved to be a warm, gracious man who
is truly inspiring. Keep an eye out for
Volume 2 of the book and his upcoming production SHALLOW WATER.
Despite
the length of this overview, I’ve
only scratched the surface of all the wonderful things at this convention. From Hiroshi Katagiri’s Kickstarter drive
for the truly scary looking GEHENNA to Doug Jones’ patented hugs to Richard Stanley
(HARDWARE, DUST DEVIL) just hanging out and talking to people, there is so much
I’m forgetting. And while we all might look scary or weird, I
found everyone there to be very friendly…one big, giant family. I did not encounter one rude person the whole
weekend, including the hotel staff and security for the event. As many convention goers know, the real chance
to hang out with your heroes comes in the evening, at the bars and
restaurants. The Daily Grill proved to
be a great place for this…as did the open
area in front of the hotel, complete with its circular seating around fire
pits. It was like sitting around a camp
fire with some of the only people in the world who really understand you. Everyone there, fans and artists alike, was
bound together by their enthusiasm for monsters…those misunderstood creatures that we
love and who haunt our dreams. So, if
monsters are your thing…well,
you know where to go.
~ Langley J. West
