Yet another article on McIntosh, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine, Summer 1999--
Personal DemonsBY
TODD
MC
INTOSH WITH
MIKE
STOKES
If you've ever wondered why new demons always seem so surly from the moment they show up in Sunnydale, the answer may lie in Todd McIntosh's makeup trailer. If it isn't bad enough that they're already facing certain death at the hands of the Slayer, villains often experience a bit of a hazing from McIntosh before they are unleashed. The demonization period for the actors beneath the masks involves spending upwards of four hours having various hideous features glued to their faces. With those characters who have names deemed by McIntosh as too complicated to keep track of, he temporarily changes their often intimidating monikers to something more descriptive and much less awe-inspiring. After all, if your name was "The Judge" and your reputation was built by destroying cities and wreaking havoc around the globe, how would you react if you spent four hours in a makeup chair with some Hollywood mortal calling you the Smurf demon? It'd probably make you want to incinerate everybody in the mall too.
"After a while, all the demon names blend together," contends
Buffy makeup supervisor McIntosh. "I'm not good with names anyway--Lagos, Kulak, Kralik, Balthazar.....help!"
When it comes to turning men into monsters through specical makeup effects, McIntosh is the best in the business--and he's got the Emmy Award to prove it. A longtime fan of the vampire lore, McIntosh seems to be the perfect fit for a show like
Buffy. His career unofficially began when he was just a kid trying to replicate the look of the vampire
Barnabas on the T.V. series
Dark Shadows (1966-71). When he was a teenager, he was doing makeup effects for a local theater company in his native Canada, and he began work as the head makeup artist on
Buffy in 1997.
Whatever he chooses to call them, the creatures which McIntosh and Optic Nerve (the show's visual effects house) work together to create each have a distinct look and are uniquely unforgettable. Having worked on dozens of homicidal uglies and creepy bloodsuckers since he began work on
Buffy, and as his third season with the show rolls to a close, we thought we'd ask Todd for his favorite villains and let him explain what goes into making the best of the baddest. We found that there's never a dull moment for McIntosh, and each week brings a new challenge that winds up being more rewarding than the last. Here are five demons that stand out in his mind as the most challenging and enjoyable he's done.
(to be continued
)