As told to Margarette Torralba
Margarette: For those that aren’t familiar with who you are and your talents, give us a little bit of a background of what it is you do.
Jonathon: My name is Jonathon Mario Aspittle. I started getting into special makeup effects when I was a kid, and took off from there. Now I have a small studio called CrowCaw FX where I do custom prosthetics, mermaid tails and appliances, makeup, events and all sorts of fun stuff. I have been featured on SyFy, I have been featured on a couple news stations, and a couple of different tv networks as well as education and body painting at conventions across the country. Now, I currently have my small studio out of San Jose, CA with my cat and my partner and I make monsters in my backyard!
M: I didn’t know that you made the mermaid tails for “mermen”. I didn’t even know that mermen existed, just mermaids.
J: There’s quite the mermen community out there.
M: That’s awesome!
J: All sorts of people get into it from all genders and all walks of life. It’s really been a pretty cool community to learn about and grow with.
M: Did you mention that you’re originally from Utah?
J: Yeah, I’m originally from Salt Lake City-ish, Utah
M: So when did you move to the Bay Area?
J: I moved out here about 4 years ago. My partner is over at Apple and so we moved out here for his job, and because all my stuff is mainly studio work and mermaid work, I am able to work pretty much anywhere as long as I have the space. I can’t work out of a closet. (LOL) Let me specify, as long as I have the space, I can set up a studio for work. I moved out here and got away from the snow and it’s been amazing! I just love it out here.
M: How did you get started? Like how did you discover Special Makeup Fx? Because growing up I didn’t hear a lot about a career in SFX Makeup?
J: A couple different ways actually. I decided pretty early on in my life that life was super boring and I had to find a way to make it something else. I always drew and painted and did art and all of that sort of stuff. When I was in elementary school, they had a bookfair and I found a makeup kit. It was this little makeup kit at the bookfair. I took that and I just fell in love with it. It’s also kind of funny, my father, at one point when he was a little kid, also wanted to be a mask maker and a makeup artist. He had a really old, not really old, but an older book on making monsters, too. So I had that book, then I got those two books at the book fair and just exploded with it. I loved it!
In high school I was able to really start blossoming. I went to a specialty high school for filmmaking, so I was able to take some makeup classes. I went from taking the classes, to having taken all the classes, to independent study, to teaching some of the classes.
When I first got into school I wanted to become a director. I was an actor but I wanted to direct. I wanted to make movies, but by the time I left, I really loved makeup! I loved what you could do with it and how you could have anything you could dream up actually walking around. I loved that so much! My tagline for a couple years was “Breathing life into your sweetest dreams and your darkest nightmares”. Because that’s how I feel, how I felt. I could dream something up, see something and work with a director. I LOVED the way a director would react or how an actor would react when they see themselves, or they see the character that was bouncing around in the head, and they would just beam when they finally saw it come to life! I loved that feeling and I loved seeing that!
M: Did you have any mentors/influencers that influenced who you are and your work?
J: I wouldn’t be doing makeup if it weren’t for the work of Gordon Smith, who did the silicone encapsulated appliances and pioneered that side of the industry starting with “X-Men”. I think that was in (the year) 2000 when I saw the Mystique appliances. I loved it! I loved it so much! Her character and just everything about the character Mystique, I loved! Then I learned more about the makeup, his process, and not only how beautiful the makeup was, but it took eight hours! Not only did they do that, but they did things scientifically to make it bond to her skin! Just thing, after thing, after thing, and it just enchanted me and I fell in love with it. How she could be so real! And be 100% covered in makeup?! That made my mind explode!
The next is Rob Bottin, [the 1985 movie] Legend and his whole team that created Legend. “Darkness” played by Tim Curry and Alice Playten as “Blix” (Legend, 1985), and “Meg Mucklebones”, the witch, the swamp witch character (played by Robert Picardo). These makeups were huge, beautiful pieces of foam latex. That’s when I knew what I wanted to do! I wanted to recreate that makeup. I wanted to do something that incredible and that real. I remember watching the DVD extras. It was something I saved up for. I couldn’t wait ‘cause they were coming out with a specialty DVD of Legend and the extras. I remember watching and rewatching the makeup sections. They would do the BTS photos with Tim Curry and all of his film pieces. And again, it would capture my imagination and that’s when I knew what I wanted to do!
Actual, literal people [influenced me], there’s a guy named Walt Watts, there’s a guy named Sean Gordon and there’s a guy named Chris Hanson. Each one of these guys influenced me in their own way.
Sean literally taught me how to airbrush. Walt was trying to get me to be an airbrush artist. Watching their technique… Walt worked at a haunted house and every single night, I’d watch him and what he’d do. I would try and copy him. And Sean would answer tons and tons of questions for years, because he’d done makeup out in Utah. And Chris Hanson, ‘cause he’s the next step up. He’d been to LA, done the thing then he’d come back and show us what he created. I was able to see a couple (of his) projects and be near him, and learn from him. They kinda got me started.
There’s also a man named Jim Bindkey who gave me really cool shots and chances as well, and helped a lot with my education.
I could keep giving more and more people who’ve touched me in some way or who’ve helped or inspired me that are great directors… There's a long list. It makes me really grateful now. I haven’t listed them out in awhile. I feel really grateful for that. Thank you.
M: How long does it usually take you to complete a tail?
J: About a month. I’ve had a few that took me about a few weeks. I’ve had some that have taken me 6 or more months, it just depends on what I have going on at the time.
M: What was your first job as an artist? What kind of art did you start with?
I started with a couple ladies that wanted me to do their makeup for halloween. I was really young.
M: How old were you? I don’t remember.
J: My parents are really really wonderful! They were very encouraging of whatever I did. So instead of “don’t be an artist” or “don’t be this”, or “this won’t make any money”, “oh, you gotta go do this”, they would look at me and were like “oh, you want to do this? We’ll show you how to make money doing this”. “You want to do that? Cool, we’ll teach you how to be an entrepreneur” and stuff. I might’ve been early junior high, late elementary. I was a child doing these people’s makeup.You Know what? I think I was in junior high.
I always knew that I wanted to do art when I was a really little kid. Or not even that little. As a kid, I dreamt of having an umbrella company called the “Aviary”. And under the aviary, I would have “Raven Wing Films” which was my film company. Then I would have “Owl Eye Optics” which was going to be my photography company. And then I was going to have “CrowCaw FX”, which was the makeup company which is the only one that survived. (lol). The only part of the Aviary that came to fruition was CrowCaw FX and its various renditions throughout the years. But yeah, I always knew I wanted to be an artist, but there was a gap where I didn’t do a lot. It’s been always and forever. I’ve always done art.
M: What would you say is the best/worst thing about being a SFX MUA?
J: Let’s start with the worst then I’ll move to the best to end it on a positive note there. Let’s see. I have a serious answer and I have a silly answer. Which one do you want?
M: We’ll take both (lol)
J: Okay. The serious answer is that I’m my own worst enemy. I control my schedules, I control my bids, I control everything. So if I underbid something it’s my fault and I have to deal with it, and there is no “shoot where’s the insurance?”, or “shoot, let’s talk to the big company”, or “oopsies”. It’s like the cash register, it’s all my fault and I have to deal with it. It all comes down to me. I can’t stand doing bids. Bids just give me the worst anxiety, and frustrate the living heck out of me.
The silly answer, molds! I cannot stand mold making. I love every part of my job except for the business part. Bureaucracy sucks and taxes suck but everybody has to do taxes. And bids suck, but you have to do bids to make money. But outside of that stuff that requires paperwork and a computer, moldmaking! It is just a pain in my existence sometimes.
I’ll work on this beautiful, wonderful sculpture and it can be destroyed in moments if I make a mistake. Or it gets stuck! And I’ve had moments where it gets stuck. The sculpture, the mold, the materials, everything! You can put all this work into something and still have the mold be crappy because you’re not good at molds, like me! (LOL) Next thing you know, I’ve got bubbles and “fix” work. I dream of the day I can just hire someone to make my molds and just go, “This is it. Go mold it. This is the kind of mold I want”. Or even better, to have someone that I could bring in and look at the sculpture and go “Okay, what do I need to do to make this so that you can do your job?” Then both of us can work together and make the piece the way it needs to be so I can come back and make it. Then I would be done molding. Screw mold making! Except that it’s very important and it needs to be done.
So I’ve already told you about what my favorite, favorite, favorite thing is. And that is just when the thing comes to life! When I am working on makeup and stop seeing my scenes. I start believing the fantasy and that, that feeling is what makes me feel alive!
If I see a mermaid in the water, and it looks like a mermaid in the water and I can’t tell that it’s not a mermaid in the water, I did my job! And it’s perfect! And it’s amazing! Or when I start to paint something and I can paint and paint and paint. But when I start forgetting where I put the seam and the monster starts to wake up… I used to love this with haunted house actors because they’d watch themselves in the mirror. I‘d have to start telling them, “dude, you have to sit still”, “Hey, hey, you have to stop growling”, “Dude, don’t bite my brush damn it!”, “Hey, okay, come on”. I love that! It’s like they’re turning into beasts, and into monsters.
There was this one time it was the complete opposite. I had a neighbor ask me to paint her as a fairy for halloween. And I’ll make it really brief. I almost cried. I think I cried. When I got done with the makeup, she turned and looked in the mirror at herself and she got all teary. She was like, “This is how I want to look. This is how I feel.” She was just so beautiful, and she felt so beautiful.
I had another woman, she was a teacher. People would misjudge her based on how she looked. So, she and I created a makeup look and designed something to show off who she really was. She raised bugs, she had kids, she was a teacher, she could control a room. She was an incredible, powerful, and beautiful spirit so we made her into a terrarium with her bugs. We covered her in moss and did a wood-painted structure, and did a photoshoot with her covered in her cockroaches and her tarantula. These are some of my favorite pictures. She just came alive and I just loved that. That’s my favorite part! Something cool about art is that it can be incredibly collaborative.
M: What advice would you give to future artists that want to get into the industry?
J: Study, study, study! Network, network, network! Get to know what’s going on in the industry at the current time. Get into the habit of looking into what may be coming up. Hone your skills. Constantly learn. Everything you touch will teach you something. Even if that something is something that you don’t want to do, or it is something not right.
M: What’s an unusual/uncommon skill you’d say you have to have to be a successful makeup artist?
J: It’s not a fun answer. Any sort of business. Learn business, learn accounting, learn all that sort of stuff. That is the stuff, and I’ll be honest, I very sorely lack at. I wish I had taken it more seriously when I started my company and made it more second nature. Because ultimately, if you want to do this as a company, as a business, then you need to understand that it is a company and a business. If you want to do this as a hobby, as art, understand that these can play with each other and interact but they aren’t the same. You need to have time in your life for your art, YOUR art, your company, your practice, your family time, and they’re all different. You can make your life crazy if you’re trying to live life through your company’s art. You can burn out your soul very quickly. There are so many things to balance learning how to run a company successfully. You can go into anything you want. You can go into cooking, you can go into makeup, you're still running a company and that is what you need.
M: That’s actually great advice. Because when you think of makeup artists, or any artists in general, you don’t think about that. You just think about the creativity part and getting your artwork out there.
J: It’s called “starving artist” for a reason! (LOL) Don’t be a starving artist. Learn how not to be a “starving artist”.
M: What’s the message you want your work to say? Like if you couldn’t describe it to people & they were just looking at it. What’s the message you would like your artwork to convey?
J: I haven’t thought of my art like that in a long time. That’s such an interesting question to me because I just don’t think like that anymore.
There’s a lot of beauty in the unconventional. We are shifting pieces and things aren’t always what they seem. And sometimes it’s okay to peel back something’s mask to see what’s really hiding underneath there. Because it might be even more fantastical then you’ve ever imagined.
M: Where do you see yourself 1 year from now?
J: A year from now, I want to continue working on film; have a few more makeup projects under my belt; be all completed with my current tail list and onto the next tail lists. I’m going to try and get my company 100% established in California and up and going. I want the main push (to be) for the mermaid side of things. It’s going to be bringing out the inner siren in everyone.
I learned that my happy place is… I really like monsters and I really like weird things, and I really like unique tails. So moving forward I’m going to be more specific about the stuff and tails that I design. I really want to start offering accessories to all mermaids, mermen … or merfolk (I really need to stop using the term “mermaid”), all merfolk, that allows them to bring out their inner siren!
I want to figure out gloves; I want to have gills; multiple styles and designs of gills for chokers. I call it a gill wrap. I make a product that's made of silicone wrap that goes around your rib cage. It’s a set of gills, so it works for everybody. It can be added to bras, it can be added to anything. It just works for everybody. But I want to get a few more styles out and other cool and innovative things that I could figure out with my team. I want to make it so that even your most classic, princess-y, pink and sparkly mermaid can go, “you know what, hold on, I’m gonna go get something from my closet”, then pulls out a CrowCaw FX box and 3 minutes later, she’s a daring, sparkly pink siren ready to eat children. It’ll be a gay ol’ time! That’s my happy spot. I have skulls in my backyard. What do you expect?
M: Do you have any upcoming projects we should know about?
J: Probably the siren gills. That’s gonna be the next big thing. I’m going to be doing a bunch of different gills.
It’s not produced yet, but I did a fan film for “Dead Space”. That’ll be coming out but I don’t have any idea of when that’s coming out! That will be really fun and I will be posting about that.
And some time over the summer, I will be opening up my commission books again. That’ll be the first time in a couple of years, so that’s probably the biggest thing I have coming up.
M: What is your dream/ideal project that you’d want to work on next?
J: I want to do something in Japan. I would love to do something collaborative. A collaborative film or something, or just anything in Japan.
On that note, I have a life-long series of “Yokai”. Yokai are Japanese monsters or spirits. I’ve done an Oni that I’m happy with. I’m like, “Okay, this is a good Oni, it can be put into my books”. And I’ve designed some “Jorōgumo”, which are spider-women. But the one that I want to make is like 13 feet tall and she takes up a room and is just a beautiful thing. It’s on my bucket list.
I also want to make a dragon. A very large dragon. I don’t know when I will be able to or how I will do it, or where I will put it, if I end up making it for myself. But when I was in elementary school, in first, second, or third grade, there was a book in our library that I checked out as often as they would let me check it out. It was an art book about paper mache. Up until this point, I’ve only ever seen paper mache, “hey guys we’re gonna cover the balloon”, “Yay, paper mache balloon”, “oh my goodness, pinata! Yay!” So that’s what I was expecting, but this person would make goblins, dragons, creatures and Jim Henson-esque monsters and he decorated his house. I was just “WOW! That’s what I want!” So I started playing with paper mache and playing with my own clay and trying to figure how I could do all of that one day. Now I’m a 30+ year old adult, and I have adult toys, and adult money - well I don't have adult money yet. One day I’ll have adult money - and I am sure I can do hell of a lot better than paper mache. So I want to make a dragon.
Ideal situation, some movies, some theme parks, some tech millionaire/billionaire who’s bored and wants a dragon for halloween; and I also want to do some type of Chinese/Japanese style mermaid tail. A long extended tail, even though it may not be good in use in the water long-term, I think for occasional use it’ll be fine. I want to do fur down the back. And if I really get fancy, maybe I’ll do fur and maybe lay it into the scales coming out. It’ll be really really cool and hyper detailed, big, beautiful, white pearl, gold dragon. It’s gonna be one of those tails that I have in the back of my head that I will make some day.
I also want to build a 13-foot tall werewolf. But it’s not what you think werewolf, like a big, scary werewolf. I want to build a direwolf, and I want it to be a puppet. I want this to be a thing where you look out into the forest in the Seattle area or somewhere in Washington, and you can see that light glint in the eye. Then it gets closer and you’re like, “Oh, it’s a wolf. It has to be like 20 something feet away. Uh, wait a minute”. Then you slowly realize it’s not close to you, it’s actually pretty far away, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And it’s this 13-foot thing, tall. I want to do a shot with just the trees and amongst the trunks is the legs of the wolf. It’ll be cool.
M: If you could work with ANYONE in the future, who would it be & why?
I would really love another chance to work with Joseph LaRoch and my friend Annie who now lives in Butte, Montana. I haven’t worked with her in a long time and I miss working with her.
M: If anyone wants to look up your work, find out more info about you & any upcoming project & events, where can they find you?
J: CrowCaw_FX on Instagram
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