Swell Spotlight: Professional SFX & Beauty Makeup Artist, Heidi Hagan
Hey, Swell Casters, this is Taylor, and I want to welcome you to another Swell Spotlight. Spotlights. Give us a chance to learn about fascinating people from different industries around the world. Today we have professional makeup artist Heidi Hagan, who, aside from being a graduate student of one of the world's top makeup schools, has been published in Vogue for her hair and makeup work and has served as a prosthetic model at Wundercon ComicCon in Anaheim, California
I also wanted to add that I'll open the spotlight up to public comments and questions. Once Heidi and I have a little bit of a back and forth going. Hope you guys enjoy
Hey, Taylor, thanks for having me on here to answer that question. We have to go back a little bit. When I was in middle school, my mum put me in a performing arts summer camp, and I decided that I really liked it and kept going all the way through high school all four years, years into drama. When I was participating in the plays, I slowly realized that my favorite part was hair, makeup and costumes
Heidi, thank you so much for that thoughtful response. It's so great to have you here. And it's so great for you to shed some light on your decision to pursue something that you're truly passionate about. I feel like a lot of times in the current society we live in, there's so much, much pressure to just do, rather to do something that you truly enjoy. So it's great to hear that you committed yourself fully to something that you love
If you've never worked on a client, it is great to learn how to interact with other people and learn how to have them sit in your chair. And this also includes everything as eyebrow shaping, color matching, just your very basic skills that you need to have. I then went to a hair program like I said, no cut or coloring because they don't have a cosmetology license. But it is important to learn how to style
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
There's a few different artistic projects that you took part in. One was a Vogue Photo shoot. One was when you were actually a model at Wundercon. And I know you mentioned to me privately that the prosthetic in that case took several hours to apply. And then you mentioned The Beast, where you had to lay individual hairs, which I could never imagine doing. So I'd love to know what was your personal challenge both in school and as a professional
Hey. Yeah. So there definitely were challenges. When I went to school, I'll give you one from the beauty side as well as special effects for beauty. I would have to say that photo shoot days were really hard. One person gets assigned hair and the other person gets it's assigned makeup, and then the next photo shoot, you flip
Wow. So I want to say that first of all, that sounds like a lot of very, very tedious and diligent work on your part as someone who can't really draw a stick figure in if I tried, your artistic ability is definitely something that I admire a lot. I want to talk about something you mentioned because I'm not sure if other listeners here know what the term means, but you bring up something called life casting. What is life casting? What does that entail?
Also, I just wanted to mention that this Spotlight conversation is now open. So if you have a question or a comment that you wanted to ask Heidi, please go ahead and record as well
You have to put plaster bandage on and let it Harden, and then you have to extract that person out. This is great, though. It leaves you with the mold of their face. So like I said earlier, you can start working on their face from scratch, so you know that your prosthetic is going to fit them. I was casted for a modeling demo that I did at Wundercon
Wow, Heidi, as somebody who's slightly claustrophobic, that experience sounds absolutely horrifying, but also incredibly cool and rewarding. When you think about the amount of time and effort that goes into applying makeup and prosthetics it's mind boggling. I think about Hollywood films, where actors have to sit in chairs for several hours a day just to have their makeup applied. The dedication is absolutely tremendous. I know that recently you've sort of started to transition away from the world of film makeup and towards beauty
So when my clientele started picking up for beauty makeup, I decided that I was going to transition and leave the world of film behind. I do a lot of very glam makeup now very colorful and a ton of glitter. I'm even launching my own glitter line, and it just came down to me wanting to do the same thing over and over again every day. I'm passionate about it. I love it, and it never felt tiring