Greta Gremlin: San Diego ComicCon 2018

This year I was lucky enough to be hired for a makeup job at San Diego ComicCon. I was hired by Serena Ruiz to transform her Greta Gremlin from Gremlins 2 on Saturday of ComicCon. In order to complete this daunting task, we started from scratch creating all the prosthetics needed.

Since this was my first time going to ComicCon, I truly had no idea what to expect. I ended up being happily blown away and had such a great time! Not only is there a packed convention center filled with shopping and celebrities, but all the streets in downtown get blocked off and it becomes a hole block party full of restaurants, escape rooms, and, of course, so many people dressed up in cosplay costumes! Definitely something I recommend going to and I will for sure be back again!

Here is a basic step by step of our journey in creating Greta Gremlin:

The first step was to lifecast Serena in order to get a 3d stone copy of her face and hands for me to sculpt the Greta prosthetics on. The act of lifecasting in summary is putting a bald cap on the model, covering her face in a 2 part silicone to capture all the details in her face and skin, followed a plaster bandage shell to add support, and then they are pealed off once they are set. From there I filled the negative impression her face left with a stone called UltraCal-30 to create the stone positive of her face.

Above is the face stone lifecast for me to sculpt the facial prosthetic.

Above is the hand life cast to sculpt the hand prosthetic. We lifecasted her in the "Spock live love and prosper" pose since gremlins only have 3 fingers. This way I was able to sculpt only three fingers instead of five.

Once the lifecasts were made, I then used water-based clay to sculpt out what I wanted the prosthetics to look like. I used friendly plastic to create the horns and nails and sculpted the face, hands, and multiple scale and texture pieces.

Hand sculpture above.

Another angle of the hand sculpt.

After the sculpture was complete, I then made stone molds of the sculpts. Once the mold is dry, I opened them and cleaned out all the clay. Once the clay is cleaned out there is now space between the hand lifecast and mold. I then fill that space with foam latex and bake the mold in the oven to cure the latex and create a foam latex prosthetic.

15 foam latex prosthetics were then applied to Serena, lashes, beauty makeup, and full airbrush body paint to transform her into Greta Gremlin.

We then walked around ComicCon and could barely walk two feet without being stopped for pictures. She truly stole the show!

In the end we did a three hour and 45 minute makeup, contacts, 15 latex prosthetics, fabricated ears, and full body paint to transform her completely into a gremlin.

Can't wait till next year. How are we gonna top this?

Huge thanks to Serena Ruiz for hiring me, Brittany Turpen for assisting me on this job.

Body makeup using European Body Art airbrush makeup, lips are Anastasia Beverly Hills liquid matte lipstick topped with MAC lip gloss, lashes from Frends Beauty, and all prosthetics made by Kyrsta Morehouse.

See more of my work at kyrstamorehouse.com and @kyrstamua.

Greta Gremlin fabricated ears and prosthetics available for sale. Email me at [email protected] for more information.

The original Greta Gremlin from Gremlins 2 created by Rick Baker and team so you can see the character we were trying to duplicate.

Full body character covered head to toe in different scales and textures.