Saturday at IMATS

Carl and I spent Saturday at the International Make Up Artist Trade Show (IMATS) in Pasadena, CA. This was the 2nd time we have attended, the first time was back in 2004. The trade show features vendors, artists, competitions, a museum, and seminars about both fashion/ beauty make-up and Special Effects (FX) Make Up. Carl is a Special FX Make-Up Artist.

The trade show was much busier than it was 6 years ago. It also seemed like there was a bigger focus on fashion/ beauty make-up than Special FX. The art of airbrushing has also become more popular since our last visit and there were several airbrushing booths this year instead of the one booth they had on '04. That meant that there were more naked (almost) women and men walking around with nothing on but paint. Here is an airbrushed Elvis...

One of the events that we looked forward to at IMATS was the student competition. The competition is highly competitive and they only select 8 participants to participate in each category. This year they had 2 competitions, one for Fashion/ Beauty with a theme of Alice in Wonderland and one for Prosthetic Make-Up with a theme of Grimm Fairy Tales. Unfortunately we miss read the schedule of events and the Prosthetic competition was scheduled for Sunday, so we weren't able to catch it. We did see the Fashion/ Beauty portion though. The crowd was 10x's bigger than it was in '04. All the artists in the student competition have to be enrolled in, or have graduate from a Make-Up school with in the past 12 months. Of the 8 artists, only one of them was from the US, the others hailed from Canada, England, Taiwan, Japan, and Mexico. The winner received $1,000 and will be featured in 'Make Up Artist Magazine'. This is the winning look.

One of the highlights of the day was getting to meet 'the Godfather of Special FX', Dick Smith. We have met him before but it is always a pleasure. It was actually his birthday too, he is 88 years old. Dick Smith created the make-up FX for movies such as Exorcist and The Godfather. He pioneered many Special X techniques in the industry and won an Academy Award for his work on the film Amadeus.

We finished our Saturday with some Cold Stone Creamery and a walk around the shops in Pasadena with some friends. Later that night we met up with friends again to watch Gown Ups. It was a very funny movie, I like Adam Sandler because he looks and acts like my brother.

I'm not sure what our plans for today will be yet...but join me on Monday for a new edition of 'His and Her Dinner'!