Life & Work with Ethan Ray

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ethan Ray.

Hi Ethan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was 10, the roaring fire of passion erupted inside of me, sparked by complete coincidence. The spark itself was absolutely trivial, uncovering a cheap “fake injuries” kit in my garage, but it was a fitting summation of my life up until that point. Socially awkward and isolated in an extremely small school, I had absolutely no clue who I was. I feel like most people can relate, all my life I had been floating about haplessly, like a speck of dust in the wind, hoping for some meaning and purpose to fall into my lap. But unlike most people, through sheer luck and coincidence, my purpose actually did fall into my lap, and immediately, even at such a young age, I knew that this was my calling in life. For the past nine years, I’ve been following this path with the same fiery passion and excitement I began with. I spent thousands of hours and sleepless nights practicing, experimenting, and slowly but surely improving. Eventually, I started to not be terrible at it, and seeing my progress and passion, local professional artists took me in and showed me the proper way to do everything. Now I’m just beginning college, trying my best to balance this extreme shift in my life with pursuing my passion. While I can’t foresee the future, I can confidently say that no matter what, I’ll always be doing effects makeup because my roaring fire of passion is far too bright to die down now.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
While the journey has definitely been enjoyable, by no means has it been smooth. One struggle that has always plagued me up until this day is the issue of motivation. Not motivation on a grand scale, I certainly have that, but more on a daily scale. What’s the point of getting up and doing this, what difference will one day of progress make, why not just rest and do it tomorrow? These questions are all valid, but the problem comes when every single day you decide to take a break, and soon you haven’t done anything for a month. It’s not because I don’t enjoy it, but because makeup is difficult. It can be very stressful and overwhelming at times, and it can be crushing to put weeks of hard work into something for it to turn out awful or to just stop working on it halfway through. It is very fun and rewarding most of the time, but it is not easy, and I’ve also frequently fallen into the opposite side of overworking and neglecting my body and self-care because of being so absorbed in a project.

No matter how much work I put in, I always feel like I’m falling behind, and in an extremely competitive industry like makeup falling behind means certain failure, so I either respond by overworking to catch up or not working at all because it feels useless. So how do I deal with this stressful burden? While I don’t completely know yet, what has worked for me so far is balance. I get up and work for a certain amount of time and try to stop at a certain amount of time, regular but not grueling intervals of work time allow me to enjoy what I’m doing, feel like I’m making progress, and allow me to still focus on other aspects of my life like school, social stuff, and physical and mental health. It still isn’t easy, actually following the schedule is the hardest part. But just as I am improving as a makeup artist, I am slowly improving my abilities as a healthy, dedicated individual.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am an effects makeup artist, but that title is deceptively simple. While I do apply prosthetics and makeup to actors to make them look like creatures or give them injuries, the field of effects makeup is much more broad than that. I am also a sculptor and moldmaker because you have to sculpt all of the prosthetics and pieces out of clay or some other material, and you have to make all the complex molds in order to create copies of whatever thing you made. There is a ton of chemistry and math involved, you have to know thousands of materials inside and out in order to know what to use in a specific situation. There’s also hairwork, lifecasting, painting, denture making, animatronics, puppetry, fake bodies and body parts, practical blood gags, and so many more different complex art forms that are all under the umbrella of effects makeup artists. That’s one of the main reasons I love effects makeup so much, it is so broad and complex that no matter how good you get at one thing, there will always be something else to learn. As for my work personally, I don’t really have anything special or recognizable. I have yet to do any direct work on a film, all of my work this far has been practiced to improve my skills. While I am proud of some of it, it is all working towards a cumulative goal to actually do a makeup on a film that I am proud of. However, I have used my skills in makeup in some other ventures specifically I ran a successful Etsy store for about a year during the pandemic selling custom, hand painted silicone figures and creatures. I am currently working on a very complex old age makeup that will hopefully be the first work I’ve done that I’m really proud of, while it isn’t for a film I hope to make it film quality and hopefully do things of similar quality afterwards.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I learned a very important lesson during Covid-19 which was: don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. It was March 2020, my 18th birthday was in August. When I turned 18, I could finally get onto film sets and start working part-time in studios. It was going to be my big break into the industry, I had planned everything on starting right as I turned 18. Of course, when I turned 18, it was the height of the pandemic and nothing was filmed for a few months afterwards.

Seeing this, I was understandably crushed. I had banked everything on this and it was swept out from under me. But I wouldn’t let this setback stop me from progressing. I made a promise to challenge myself instead of just waiting for something to come to me, so that’s exactly what I did. I challenged myself to start an online business and make money to help pay for college. I was terrified of running an online store, but I knew that the well-defined deadlines would keep me in the studio every day. And it did, I spent at least 8 hours a day in my studio, working tirelessly on filling way more orders than I could handle. But I did handle it, and while it was extremely difficult sometimes, working me to the point of pulling all-nighters, I pushed through and made a successful online store. I learned a lot from running that store, but the most important thing I learned was that I could make worthwhile challenges and endeavors for myself and that in the face of confusion and dismay like I was feeling, keeping yourself focused will get you through it.

Contact Info:

• Email: ethanray22@gmail.com
• Website: www.ethanraymakeup.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eray_spfx/