Max Schreck was beyond the expression of words alone in his performance as Count Orlok in Nosferatu. Part of why I do not understand how they intend to remake the film in 2017. That said, he (and possibly whoever helped him with the makeup, as it is not known for sure if he wholly did it himself) was a genius in minimal makeup application and making a design that works with the features of his face and head. It is hard to believe that all he used was a bald cap, some putty on the bridge of his nose, ear extensions, and hair tufts at the eyebrows and behind the ears, and then some greasepaint. A simple design you see repeated with the two Nosferatu recreations that I think actually worked, Klaus Kinski's (Nosferatu the Vampyre) and Willem Dafoe's (Shadow of the Vampire) in the two best homage films to the original Nosferatu (although it itself was a blatant copyright violation of Dracula).
And with that inspiration, I spent the better part of the morning working out how to build up the bridge of my nose, and brow, with a modern putty, to try my own hand at capturing the iconic look. I found it was definitely a 'less is more' exercise as the difference between a subtle, yet sinister nose and brow, was about an eigth an inch away from cartoonish rat face makeup. I am thinking that will go even more so for the ears and teeth. Honestly, I'm tempted to try and pull off a 'rake' Nosferatu, to try and find someway to be unnerving, yet also alluring, but that is a pretty tall fucking order there with the nature of the original's design (Now I have a mental image of me training to get a six pack just to wear a midriff shirt and cloak, and look like some ridiculous stripper nosferatu).
I'm pretty sure I'll have it all together by October 31st though.