Zombie Coven: Kris Kobzina + Etched Skull Statue

I met Kris Kobzina about a year and a half ago while visiting Cinema Makeup School in downtown Los Angeles. He teaches special effects makeup there part time, helping young artist hone their craft, when he's not working in his shop or on set doing special effects makeup on movies or television shows.  Kris is a fellow Chicago native, and a hell of a nice guy, so we quickly struck up a friendship.

I’d been planning a Kickstarter to launch Zombie Coven, my illustrated horror novel project.  I've always been a fan of resin kits, so I knew I wanted to do some kind of  sculpture as a reward tier for the KS.  I instantly thought of Kris because he such an awesome artist. www.kreativekontrolfx.com

We decided that Kris would do a life-size bust based on my "Etched Skull Zombie” painting that I did for Zombie Coven. He also did a smaller resin bust (about 8” x 8") of my "Rebirther" painting (which I'll tell you about in my next blog post).

Here's some WIP (work-in-progress) photos and the final result. Kris sculpted the bust in clay, made a mold, and cast it in resin. Then he painted it in movie make up maquette fashion, and it came out awesome. (Photos: Kris Kobzina, unless otherwise noted).

We're offering a limited of three hand-painted, life-size busts of "Etched Skull Zombie” in the Kickstarter.  We also have the "Rebirther” bust, either unpainted or painted by Kris, and a KS specially priced Kris Kobzina zombie/creature gelatin application workshop, limited to 8 students.

UPDATE:  I've closed the Kickstarter, but the statues are available in the BaxaArt.com Store: http://www.baxaart.com/BT_storefront.htm

copyright 2015 Thomas M. Baxa

Photo: Chet Zar

Here's a turnaround video of clay sculpture.  Go get a painted one at http://www.baxaart.com/BT_storefront.htm

 Photo: Mike Ferdie

  Photo: Mike Ferdie

  Photo: Mike Ferdie

 Photo: Mike Ferdie

Here's the WIP, so you can see Kris's process.  Pretty cool!

Kris Kobzina is a professional special FX make-up artist and FX instructor for several schools, with a career spanning 19 years.  Kris has worked for various FX shops and on set in Hollywood on such films/TV shows   "RED DRAGON", "PUNISHER",  "MIB 2", "SPIDERMAN", "X-FILES" and many more. Kris operates his own FX shop, Kreative Kontrol FX Prosthetic Studio were, in-between working on tv/film projects, he conducts professional F/X make-up workshops and one-on-one training.  www.kreativekontrolfx.com