IMATS Toronto 2009 - PT 1

November 21st and 22nd marked the first annual International Make-up Artists Trade-show (IMATS) in Toronto, ON, Canada. Over the last year or so the IMATS have expanded greatly beyond their long-running shows in Pasadena, California and London, England to include a show in Sydney, Australia, and two Canadian shows - an upcoming one in Vancouver and this show in Toronto.
Not only was I excited by the prospect of an IMATS being a lot closer to home than Pasadena but there was the added bonus that one of the scheduled keynote speakers was Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion!

Personally, I had a fantastic time at the show. This being its first year IMATS Toronto was quite small. If I'd been walking around solely as a spectator it would have been easy to see everything quite quickly (although there were two stages which kept up a steady stream of demos and talks all weekend where one could easily park themselves and just soak in the knowledge) However I was lending a helping hand at the FuseFX booth (literally and figuratively - there was a silicon copy of my hand sitting on the table all weekend) so I had lots to keep me occupied.

One of the coolest things to see was the museum area. The museum is a traditional part of the IMATS, and the Toronto museum, although again very small, was a real treat especially if you happen to be a big fan of the X-Men movies. Most of the pieces for the museum had been donated by Gordon Smith, of FXSmith, so it was 90% props and pre-production art from X-Men and X2: X-Men United.




I was particularly excited to see Nightcrawler's hands, feet, and tail on display. Having made my own version of the movie Nightcrawler outfit to wear for Halloween and SF cons a few years back it was awesome to see the "real" (or should I say "reel"?) thing up close. And now I want to do upgrades! ;)





"X-Men" was more or less the theme for the SFX portion of the show since the challenge for the SFX student competition on Sunday was "mutants" (Saturday's beauty competition revolved around "goth" looks). At the beginning of the competition students were given random prosthetic pieces and had to use these pieces to create a mutant make-up on their model within the alloted time period. Only the most general planning is possible before hand since no one knows what pieces they will be given during the actual competition. Since Spectral Motion had done the make-ups for X-Men 3, Mike Elizalde was the guest judge for the competition.

But more on seeing Mike - and in particular attending his keynote address in Part 2!