Wasteland face-paintings

Inspiration and research

Our Skin Effects: Wasteland was obviously inspired by the kind of post-apocalypse portrayed in the Mad Max movies and expanded in events such as the Wasteland week.
When looking for inspiration or reference, I tried finding post-apocalyptic or Mad Max makeups, but, honestly, didn’t come up with much.

There are the ubiquitous skulls eyes (which can also work as pandas :)), the foreheads (quite a few variations) and that’s about it.

There’s a bit more variety if you include fantasy or celtic leaning desings, but not that much more.
And if you start digging into make-up the designs become too intricate.

Our rules for post-apocalyptic designs

That’s why we decided to just create our own library of post-apocalyptic designs / face painting.
There are going to be artistic people in a post-apocalyptic world and they’ll want to express themselves beyond forehead and skull symbolism. And maybe this can be inspiration for someone!

Our design rules were:

Simple designs
If I have to imagine using crude or makeshift make-up tools, then I cannot pretend refinement.
A set of larger paintbrushes, the ones used for walls rather than bodies, was my imaginary / virtual tool of choice.

Bold designs
The wearer needs to make a statemente and therefore the designs have to be visible from a distance.
They may also be meant to show clan identity or be used as visual threats / warnings.

Meaningful designs
While we didn’t dive in symbolism, we still wanted designs that would say something.
Triangles and stripes are often used to represent otherwordly concepts, simpler symbolism includes the target or wings to represent freedom.

The Aeon Soul touch

Design combos
Sometimes is takes years to understand what your style is, even when it’s out there in the open for everybody to notice.
It’s the razionalitation that can be a slow process.
The ability to customize and combine is definitely one of our pillars as content creators (and creative people in general).
And even without planning it, we found out the designs included can combo amazingly, offering even more variety and uniqueness.