October 2025 Meeting
Getting Spooky with SFX Artist Tessa Gibbons
October’s monthly meeting was one for the books, and perfectly timed for spooky season.
We had the absolute pleasure of welcoming SFX makeup artist Tessa Gibbons, who gave our students a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to bring haunted house characters to life. And when we say life, we also mean the creepy, gory, jump-out-and-scare-you variety.
Tessa doesn’t just create the looks, she also performs in the haunted houses she works for. That means she understands both sides of the craft: how the makeup reads under low lighting, how it holds up through long nights, and how it enhances character performance instead of distracting from it. Our students got to hear firsthand what it’s like to transform into something terrifying and then stay in character for hours at a time. That kind of real-world insight is priceless.
She walked us step-by-step through how she builds her SFX looks, from skin prep to layering textures, adding depth, and creating realistic wounds and features. Students were especially fascinated by how much storytelling goes into each design. It’s not just fake blood and scars. It’s about who the character is, where they’ve been, and what kind of story their face tells before they ever say a word.
And because Tessa is amazing and generous with her artistry, she didn’t stop there.
She also helped one of our students develop a quick and effective Halloween pop-art inspired face design that we could use in our High School Thespian regional competition production of Late Night Confessions of a Bipolar Teen. The look is bold, graphic, and stage-ready, something that reads clearly from a distance but can be executed efficiently under time constraints.
What made the night truly special was seeing students connect the dots between makeup and performance. SFX isn’t just about looking cool. It’s about supporting character work, mood, and storytelling. Watching them ask questions, lean in, and experiment was exactly why we host these monthly meetings.
One of the biggest highlights of the night was when Tessa taught students how to create realistic bruises. She broke down the color theory behind bruising. Explaining why purples, blues, reds, and even yellows and greens are layered in specific ways to make a bruise look authentic instead of flat. Then she handed out bruise palettes and let the students try it themselves. Watching them experiment, blend, and build dimension on their own skin was incredible. By the end of the session, we had some seriously impressive (and convincingly painful-looking!) bruises walking around the room.
Huge thank you to Tessa for sharing her talent, experience, and creativity with Indiana Drama Club. Our students left inspired, and maybe just a little more excited for spooky season than they already were.
We can’t wait to see how they bring these techniques to the stage.
