Demons in Ugly Christmas Sweaters 2021

I don't get to do as many of these as I used to or would like to do,there's just not enough time after Halloween and sometimes very little time before Halloween, unless I do them in the spring and that's too much planning ahead for me. So what I've taken to doing is when I have a shoot that I feel like would make a good Ugly Sweater shoot, I just tack it on at the first of a shoot or at the end - the makeups are way more elaborate that way and it feels like less of a waste of time (considering these shoots take about 5 minutes).

 

Styx - Master of Shadows

Styx - Master of Shadows and it's sequel are two of my favorite video games ever. For ages I've been thinking about doing a prosthetic based on Styx, I finally got around to it this past summer. I immediately already had ideas for a shoot to accompany it. What should have been a overly elaborate shoot, just became a regularly elaborate shoot since I was able to cobble together a decent costume from stuff I had in storage from years of making movies and other shoots.

Just a shot showing off the contacts lenses as they normally look, I added a lighted effect over them for all the other shots.

A series of headshots, just to get an idea of lighting and how the piece would work, even these turned out great.

This is the first time I've actually storyboarded a photoshoot. Back when I made movies I used to do this all the time and since I knew this wouldn't be a random, improved pose shoot, and I wanted to create a really strong narrative element to it I thought this would cut out a lot of last minute stress and frustration during the shoot, plus the risk of missing a shot idea would be greatly reduced.

This one shot was a massive amount of work to do, but it was something I had in mind right from the beginning. One of my favorite D&D monsters if the Otyugh, so I very early on decided I would have Styx encounter an Otyugh - I just had no idea how I'd do it. In the end I sculpted a little minature Otyugh in Cosclay and just lit it similarly to the original image and comped it in.

I also wanted everything to have an 80s movie feel, so this really helped sell that idea since the Otyugh looks like a little stop-motion monster in the background.

And lastly, since in the 2nd Styx game he had a female Paladin companion throughout the game I thought this would be a good idea to incorporate into this shoot, but I wasn't interested in creating that armor so I again went with what I had on hand and came up with an elf character.

 

Odru-Shaggorath Demon

I finally got a chance to do a shoot with a prosthetic I made a few months ago, it's a female version of the original Odru-Shaggorath, and because of that I decided to do the shoot replicating the same look from that original shoot too.

 

The Three Fates.

This one of those rare shoots where I made one-off prosthetics just for it, the moulds are gone and you'll only see them here.I also rarely do shoots with multiple people, mainly because I'm only a so-so photographer and find trying to get several people into a shot and maintain some kind of focus on them is a little on the annoying side sometimes, so I just have to do what I can when these kind of shoots come up.

Having said that, this is the second time I've shot with these three on one shoot and it's always been fun so far so I proposed that maybe we do this yearly - since I'm trying to focus more on quality photoshoots that have a little more something something to them rather than just the usual random Demons (which are awesome and easy, but it can get a little too easy and simple sometimes) and coming up with an idea that needs three people presents a enjoyable challenge that I feel like I need to put back into these shoots.

And having said that, we already have next years shoot planned and it's going to be pretty fucking cool, so all you 80s horror kids should be happy with it.

 

Blue Cazuhl Demon.

This was intended to be a relatively simple "random Demon" shoot and it became this. Sometimes when a makeup gets elaborate looking like this there's a point where you're not sure it's going to work or not, but all the way with this is seemed like it was going somewhere specific until I finally finished it. Really happy with how it turned out.