Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Walls.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I never set out in my career to become a Makeup Artist. I didn’t know it was something that I would be interested in or even good at. My big goal was to become a filmmaker in any way I could.
My parents lived in Dunwoody when I graduated from Florida State University and because Atlanta wasn’t yet the film production hub that it would eventually become, I moved to Los Angeles to chase after my dream of becoming a filmmaker.
Like so many people who move to LA to chase their dreams, reality soon hit… I need an income so I can eat! My new wife and I started looking for jobs and as one does, you eventually land something. After working for a company or two as production assistants and as a production coordinator for reality TV, I found myself needing my next gig. This is when I answered a want ad on Craigslist for a production assistant at a makeup effects company.
I landed the job and ended up working for the company for about seven years and learned the business while on the job. Over the years, I learned that the seemingly random skills that I possessed all strangely related to makeup effects. I could use my drawing, painting and sculpting skills in creating a makeup effect, I could use my photography, photoshop and video editing skills in presenting and idea to production and I could use my organization skills to schedule out timeframes, establish budgets and keep builds on schedule so we could meet our deadlines. These skills, paired with the lessons that the industry veterans that I worked with, taught me how the business worked and set me on my path to success.
I eventually moved to New Orleans with the company as they set up a satellite studio to take advantage of the Louisiana film tax incentive. Eventually, the company ran into financial issues and significantly downsized which closed our Louisiana branch. Finding myself out of work, with a two year old daughter and my wife pregnant with our son, I found myself needing a new job. With a few connections and getting VERY lucky with my timing, I managed to land my first on set position as a makeup fx artist on season 1 of AMC’s “Into the Badlands”. This job shot my career off into a totally new direction as I met award-winning makeup artists that brought me onto projects such as History Channel’s “Roots”, CBS’s “NCIS: New Orleans”, “Logan”, “Black Panther”, and two seasons of “The Purge” among many other projects.
The longer I worked on set the more I realized that I had become the filmmaker that I wanted to be. I learned that as a makeup artist, I was helping an actor create a character on screen. I was creating an outward expression of that character’s journey through a story, physically on their body. This concept makes me elated to come to work every day and keeps me striving for new and exciting projects to tackle.
I moved back to the Atlanta area in 2017 and the work has not slowed down until Covid-19 brought everything to a screeching halt in March of 2020. Given that I now had more free time on my hands, I decided to start selling temporary tattoos that I’ve been making over the years for Film and Television to the general public. To test the demand for the tattoos, we’ve opened a small shop on Etsy named Off the Walls FX where we have “Fake Tattoos by Real Artists.”
https://www.etsy.com/shop/OffTheWallsFX
Over time, we plan to create a more formal web store, offer more tattoos and add more artists to our roster. Once we get over Covid-19, I’m looking forward to getting back on set and seeing where this new tattoo business takes me!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
With anything, you are always going to hit some bumps in the road. When we first moved to LA, we weren’t making much money. I know this is what most people go through when they first start out but when you aren’t making much money, living in one of the most expensive areas of the country, you tend to come up with some creative solutions.
My wife and I love to cook so when we didn’t have a lot of spare cash, we would get creative in the kitchen. One year for Christmas, my wife’s grandmother sent her a subscription for a Martha Stewart Food magazine. There was a feature called grocery bag that gave you grocery list and then recipes for five nights of meals. Each meal served four so we would eat two for dinner and then box up the last two and take it in for lunch at work the next day. Our weekly $50 grocery run would cover most of our meals throughout the week.
More recently, I’ve spent a lot of time away from my family on location. In the past several years, I’ve found myself working in places like New Mexico, New Orleans, Mexico City and Busan S. Korea. It’s one thing if you are gone for a week or so but my longest stretch was over a year! I would try to fly back to Atlanta on the weekends but you miss so many milestones in your kid’s lives. By the time I finished the jobs and got back home, I realized that my son couldn’t remember a time that I lived in our house. That’s a hard pill to swallow. That’s the thing about this business, there is a certain amount of hand-tying that you experience in accepting a job. Some artists are very selective on the projects they take for this reason. Sometimes though, working with a good team or on a once in a lifetime project means making these sacrifices.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Off the Walls FX story. Tell us more about the business.
Since I spent years learning the business in the makeup fx lab, I’m known primarily for makeup fx. Although I’ve spent the past several years expanding my skills to encompass straight / beauty makeup as well. As much as I love makeup effects and applying prosthetics to actors, I love learning and using the skills that beauty artists have for creating a character too. I strive to be that well-rounded artist.
In the past month, I’ve taken a lot of those lessons learned and have applied them to my new venture, Off the Walls FX. Since I’ve been making temporary tattoos for film and television for years, I figured why not make them for the general public?
There are a handful of companies out there that do this already but having an active relationship with artists sets our model at Off the Walls FX apart. I’ve worked with a couple of tattoo artists and over the years, I’ve converted many of their original designs into temporary tattoos. The artists Pauly Lingerfelt out of New Orleans and Shannon Young out of Los Angeles have lent their designs to these projects. We set up a cost-sharing agreement so they get a cut of every tattoo sold. I’m hoping that as time goes on, we can bring on new artists to the site and we can highlight their work too. Think user-generated content but for tattoos! That’s why our tag line is “Fake tattoos by Real Artists”.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I suppose there is a little bit of luck in everything. Being in the right place at the right time is a cliché but it’s also true. The thing is, the only way to convert that luck into success is having the skills to keep the job.
I’ve had a handful of “lucky breaks” in my career and once a door was opened, I was able to walk through without falling on my face so to speak. Each of these lucky breaks led to more work, cooler projects and new opportunities. I feel that these opportunities only present themselves when you’re ready though. The people responsible for giving you that chance sees something in you that you yourself sometimes can’t see. They don’t see the self-doubt and flaws that you see when looking at yourself and instead see the potential that you have.
Maybe luck goes further than that though. I was lucky to have the parents that I had. My mom was an art teacher and my dad ran hotels. I gained much of my art chops from my mom but I inherited my logic, gift of gab and organizational skills from him. So in that sense, I have been extremely lucky. I know that many folks have faced challenges far more than I have.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/OffTheWallsFX
- Email: Adam@adamgwalls.com
- Instagram: @offthewallsfx, @walls.adam
- Facebook: @OfftheWallsFX
- Other: https://www.imdb.me/adamwalls, http://www.adamgwalls.com
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