Toby Sells began making monster mask and crude make up at the age of ten. Worked in Los Angeles for Make Up FX artist Mark Shostrom. He is now based in Atlanta Georgia, running his own FX House "Toby Sells Creature Make up FX Shop".
Toby Sells has over 20 years in the business and an education in dental laboratory technology and maxillio facial prosthetics. He started doing Special Make Up FX at the age of Ten . As a very young child he was transforming his GI-Joe into Frankenstein's Monster and accident victims with his Dad's Bondo, or Silly Putty. After watching Planet of the Apes and a behind the scenes segment on Johnny Chambers (Make Up Artist responsible for those fantastic apes designs) in 1974, he made his first mask: it was an ape of course.
In 1980 at the age of 17, Toby got his first 'professional' job working on a local TV Commercial, then a cheap low budget horror film in Florida. At the same time near his home in a small town called Morristown TN, some young guys were making a low budget horror film. His father had heard about it threw some Hunting and Fishing buddy's from that area. One Saturday they loaded up the Truck and drove the 50 minutes or so to Morristown to see if this band of film makers could use a young aspiring make up fx artist. They got as far as the property line, where they explained why they were there and the young gentleman, whom was quiet nice, asked Toby and his father to leave. He was heart broken, but not as heart broken as he would become a few years later when the movie became such a cult classic, a horror icon named "The Evil Dead". He was so close, but so far away!
Growing up in a east Kingsport Tennessee (also the birth place of Pop Culture Icon 'Betty Page'), wanting to become a Special FX Make Up FX Artist was like living in Pompeii and wanting to be the Volcano cleaner (not quite understood). The people in his little town saw great success in working your life away in the Tennessee Eastman Kodak plant, not making monsters. At that time there were only a few books out on the subject. Richard Corson's 'Stage Make Up' and 'Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup' book. The Internet did not exist, this art was almost a secret like a Masonry ritual.
Toby Sells Creature Make up FX Shop is now Atlanta's Premier Make-up FX Shop specializing in effects for film and television. Toby's services include prosthetic make-up, characters, old age, sci-fi, fantasy, creatures and gore effects, bullet hit effects, body parts, bodies, animatronic masks,puppet and creature suits,custom sculptures, molding and casting services for CGI, museum displays, theme park props, 3D advertisement, and the hobby and toy industries. It is a small, but productive Special Make Up FX Shop with several interns and employees, which produces high quality and realistic special FX and props.
I hope you enjoy looking at my (our) work. If you have serious inquiries about using us on your next production please feel free to contact me.
