I decided that for this year’s Popaween campaign, we would do a Halloween makeup tutorial come hell or high water. When the topic when unclaimed on the list, it occurred to me that I actually knew somebody who could probably rock the shit out of anything we came up with. I reached out to her and she was totally down.

Her name is Carmen Sprague and she is stupid talented. When I told her my ideas, she gently nudged me into something a little less overdone, and something that also did not make us guilty of cultural appropriation. And thus the Popart Zombie tutorial was born. She showed me some photos that had been circulating through the internet and I was immediately sold. 

When it came time for the actual tutorial, I awoke in the morning to find that the power in my house was out, had been for several hours, in fact, and would remain off through the entirety of the project. Carmen was a trooper, though, and was able to make her magic happen by the grace of the natural light in my dining room. Luckily, our trusty photographer, Stacey, was also able to make the best of the dark circumstances. 

An hour after she began, Carmen had me  completely zombiefied. My transformation was astounding. I refused to look at the progress as she was working as I wanted to be completely surprised with the final unveiling. All I really knew about it were the colors she had chosen, whatever I could make out from my periphery and the overwhelming stiffness of my face accompanied by the severe, maddening desire to itch every inch of the skin she had painted. 

But in the end, the results were 100% worth it, as you can see in the photos and video below. And, honestly, even someone with a rudimentary talent could create some semblance of this. Carmen is a professional, after all, and worked for a time in LA doing movie makeup before returning to her terrifying roots making-up actors in one of the best haunted houses in the country, The Dent Schoolhouse. 

Apologies for the fairly poor quality of the photos. As I said, we were at nature’s utter mercy with the lightning. If you want to see more of Carmen’s work, you can follow her on Instagram (dinomazingfx). Prepare to be wowed.