Jamie Kelman

As a child of the 1970's and '80s and a fan of fantasy and science fiction, alien life forms were Jamie's childhood friends. Whether he was playing with Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons action figures, writing them into computer program text adventures on his Commodore 64, or sketching them into new comic book worlds of his own, he was soon to make a career of it.

Adolescent fears of monsters and horror movies transformed into a teenage fascination and obsession, thanks to a boom time for monster movies and special make-up effects during the 1980's. Absorbing all the information he could find in videos, books and magazines like Fangoria, his Long Island, New York basement became a laboratory in experiments of synthetic flesh. As he splattered clay, plaster, and latex on the walls and old toys, new creatures emerged.

His first professional job, at age sixteen, was as a make-up effects assistant on a TV show called Monsters, filmed in New York City. Soon after, hoping to meet tomorrow's new filmmakers, he attended college at New York University's acclaimed Tisch School of the Arts and majored in film production. While there he independently studied under Dick Smith's Professional Makeup Course and sharpened his skills working on student films, experimenting with every type of make-up effect imaginable. Meanwhile, with an eye toward the future, he minored in computers learning cutting edge computer graphics programs. Two weeks after receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1995, he headed west to Hollywood.

Only two months after his arrival, he began working in a major make-up effects lab as the assistant to an Academy Award winning make-up artist, Matthew Mungle, who became his mentor. By the time he left that lab for a freelance make-up career at the end of 1997, he had already earned a Cable Ace award and an Emmy nomination, union status, and credits on feature films. He has continued working with the top talents in the movie business, including frequent projects with legendary make-up artist Rick Baker--- Planet of the Apes, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Men in Black 2, The Ring series and others.

Jamie's lifetime love of fantasy and toys has now come full circle. He is designing and creating prosthetics, full body animatronic creature suits, puppet heads and special make-up effects from his Kelman Studio for feature films like the monster movie Headspace. Also he is combining his drawing, painting, sculpting, filmmaking, monster make-up and computer graphics skills to form the forthcoming imaginary storybook world of The Fleshycreatures of Teratoria, a land of creatures and monsters inhabited by the character toys he creates - FleshyCreatures™.

As in the fantasy worlds of the recent films he's worked on, Jamie Kelman's Studio and his company Teratoyed™ with its world of Teratoria™, designed as a special place for those with restless imaginations to escape to, arises to entertain our world with future visions and stories of creatures and characters yet to be seen or imagined.

E-Mail comments to: fexer@fleshycreatures.com