Designing Creature Makeup for Film in Photoshop by Johnny Fraser-Allen

Learn how to design and deliver professional creature makeup concepts for film using Photoshop, straight from a Wētā Workshop senior concept artist. This workshop covers the entire process from quick sketches to final approved designs.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Design original creature makeup concepts for film and TV
• Use Photoshop to create realistic, filmic-looking makeup designs
• Adapt and rework designs based on director feedback
• Incorporate actor’s features into the makeup design
• Develop multiple concepts from a single brief

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic understanding of Photoshop
• Tools: Drawing tablet, Photoshop
• Hardware: Minimum 8GB RAM, dedicated GPU recommended

📝 Description

This isn’t about painting monsters in a vacuum. Johnny Fraser-Allen shows you how to design creature makeup that actually works on a real actor’s face. He walks through his exact process used on films like The BFG and The Portable Door, starting with a quick warm-up goblin concept before diving into three full Ogre Lord designs.

The focus is on practicality. You’ll learn how to use the actor’s existing features—their bone structure, wrinkles, and skin texture—as a foundation for your design. Johnny shows how to incorporate photographic elements to build a realistic, film-ready look, all within Photoshop. He also covers how to handle director notes and quickly rework designs into alternate options for the same brief. This is the real-world pipeline for concept artists working in film.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Concept artists looking to break into film and TV makeup design
• Artists wanting to improve their Photoshop skills for creature design
• Anyone interested in the practical side of designing makeup for actors

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Johnny Fraser-Allen is a Senior Concept Designer at Wētā Workshop in New Zealand. He has designed makeup concepts for major blockbusters including The BFG (for Steven Spielberg), The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (for Peter Jackson), and The Portable Door (for the Jim Henson Company). His work focuses on the early stages of production, delivering quick, practical designs that directors can approve and the makeup team can build.

🏁 Final Result

• Three fully developed Ogre Lord makeup concepts designed over a single actor’s photo
• A practical understanding of the concept-to-approval pipeline for film makeup design
• A portfolio-ready demonstration of your ability to design realistic creature makeup