"Walking Dead" FX Guru Offers Tips on Zombie Costumes

For those of you dressing up as a zombie for Halloween this year, here are some makeup tips:

One of the biggest makeup mistakes Nicotero sees is a lack of color when creating a "dead" look. "When someone is doing a zombie makeup they tend to only use two colors: they use white pale and black around the eyes," explains Nicotero. "It looks a little skull-like but it doesn’t look realistic. When you look at your hand or your arm and you can see all the little blotches of red and yellow and brown – your skin is made up of a variety of different colors."

Shading, he says, is the key. "What we do on the show is to paint the shadows first with something like a dark burgundy and then go over the whole thing with a color we call dead – which is a yellowish, jaundice color. When you are able to use a bunch a different colors it looks more authentic. If you have a bruise there are all those colors around it – purple and red – so I try to get people to look at reality and use colors that exist in nature."

He recommends that you use powdered food coloring instead of liquid food coloring (which can stain) when making fake blood; and use lots of blood and spattering. 

Keep the dirt coming advises Nicotero, and not just for the tattered clothing and ghoulish makeup. "For the zombies on our show the inside of the mouth is all dark because a pink mouth signifies that something is alive. So we use a mixture of food coloring and black cake icing and we swish it around in every zombie mouth before they get a close up."

To give hair a matted, dull look, he recommends putting conditioner into your hair and letting it dry.

"Nowadays you can go to any Halloween store and there is a lot of basic makeup supplies," adds Nicotero. "And one way you can get mummified skin is to use liquid latex. Get Kleenex or cotton and put a little bit of latex on your hand or on your face, then you put the tissue in there and model it into wrinkles. Then you take a hair dryer and dry it. Add another layer of latex and build it up to two or three layers. It is going to look dried out and weathered looking. Then thing to do is rip the tissue paper up and paint the wound red inside so it looks really nasty."