STATEN ISLAND — Who knew the walking dead could be so sultry?
A Staten Island makeup artist has created a calendar of zombie pin-up models and has started a campaign on the popular crowd funding website Kickstarter to raise money for printing costs.
"The Zombabe Pin-up Calendar" will feature 12 models dressed up like Gil Elvgren classic pin-up paintings — if they featured beauties fresh from the grave.
Instead of the current trend of "gory" zombies, the models are painted mint green and look closer to zombies from older films like "Dawn of the Dead."
"I like gory zombies, but I felt like it can be a little bit cheesy sometimes," said Alyssa Ann Bono, 24, of Eltingville, owner of Deadly Darling FX. "I wanted to make it more pin-upy than zombie-ish."
Over a two-month span, Bono, along with hairstylist Samantha Setteducatto and photographer Michael House, worked with the models to get pictures ready for the calendar.
The makeup and wounds took around two hours to complete for each model, and the goal was to make sure that even though the girls are the living dead, they still looked like knock-outs, Bono said.
"I wanted them to be pin-ups first and zombies second," she said.
The pictures are all done, Bono said, but they need to raise $4,000 to print the calendars.
"We did all the shoots," Bono said. "It literally just needs to be printed."
The project, which runs until June 25, has currently raised $1,251.
Aside from the wall calendars, backers can also get posters of the pictures, key chains, Valentine's Day cards, makeup and effects lesson from Bono, and even the chance to get transformed into a "zombabe" yourself.
Bono got the idea for the calendar last Halloween when researching costume ideas. She thought of dressing as a zombie pin-up model, and found images of classic Elvgren pin-up paintings re-done as zombies in Photoshop.
"I really wanted to make that in people," she said. "I started to look up other Elvgren photos and starting basing it off that."
After the project ends and the calendars get printed, Bono said she plans on keeping the zombie pin-up idea alive.
"We might do another, we might do a male version," she said. "We're not really sure yet."
