Behind The Mask
click here to see the man behind the mask
The Make-Up of Star Wars - Paul Engelen by Scott Essman
One of Engelen's major make-up tasks was creating the look for the villainous Darth Maul, portrayed by British performer Ray Park. "Initially, I was presented with a set of Doug Chiang's conceptual drawings," said Engelen. "George Lucas also gave me a pile of reference details of what they were thinking of in terms of this character.
So it was really just a question of working out an exact pattern as to what materials to use in order to put the
thing together. One time we talked about just doing complete prosthetics, but I changed the view and did it freehand. Also, I colored his own teeth. It was fun, actually, getting that whole look together.
To develop the character, Engelen worked closely with the film's creature effects supervisor, Nick Dudman. "We look at the characters and talk about them and decide who should help who: he helps me, I help him," Engelen reflected. "I would apply some of the prosthetics for him, for some of the other characters. The manufacturing side of it would be at Nick's workshop. So for Darth Maul, I had to use Nick to cast Maul's jagged horns that I had molded up to apply to his head."
Engelen's final red and black visage of Darth Maul is instantly striking; quite literally a menacing phantom. "Actually, Ray has fair coloring. The red I used was actually a water-base Aquacolor that would fade, but it was quite easy to reapply by sponging on," he stated. "The black was a Reel tattoo color which I had to paint on. It's kind of plasticized so would tend to peel rather than run. I could reapply it and make good anything that was going to come away."
The full facial make-up concept for Darth Maul included a black design for the back of his head. "That's still the Reel tattoo color," the make-up artist explained. "I sponged it on, actually, with a fairly heavily saturated alcohol-based sponge and a lot of black pigment. I rolled it on, and then took it with a brush and I had to mark out, with a stencil, the exact shape of the patterns and cut around it. So I had an impression that I could drop onto the top of his head and mark off each time I did it, as reference. The Reel Creations tattoo colors worked very well, I should say, even in the heat of the Tunisian desert. Even with all of the action scenes shot out there, it worked."
For an extensive fight section between Liam Neeson's Jedi Knight character Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul towards the end of the film, Engelen was careful to maintain Park's distinct appearance. "It was a very physical fight, so I had to try to be very careful with the materials I used because I wanted to save him and myself a lot of unnecessary time trying to repatch," he noted. "He's wearing quite a lot of costume, too, with heavy black heavy-weave clothes. The hood comes off eventually, but he's still left with a suit inside." Finishing touches on the character included a silver stud earring and contact lenses. "The stud is his own," said Engelen. "We just used it as part of the character, because it was a hard kind of detail. The contact lenses were made by Richard Glass in London, whom I have worked with for the past 10 years. We tried different types, but arrived at one that seemed to be the most startling."
Copyright 1999 Make-Up Artist Magazine
