From Andrea to ALCfx...

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ANDREA LEANZA, A lover since his childhood in dinosaurs, natural sciences, creatures, films and special makeup fx, begins his experiences as a joke, when he was only twelve years old, discovering his vocation.
Almost completely self-taught, strongly inspired by the stories of masters such as Dick Smith, Rick Baker and many others, during the years he deepened his knowledge in the techniques of life-casting, sculpting and texturing, mould making, applying and painting prosthetic appliances.
Since then, he is constantly working to improve himself by learning and experiencing more and more advanced techniques and materials creating special make-up fx for commercials, TV-shows, music videos, shorts and feature films.
Following one of his greatest passion, and one of his main model of inspiration “Stan Winston” , he soon gets known for his hyperrealistic lifesize Dinosaurs models and in 2006  becomes the artistic supervisor of Mauro Scaggiante's GEOMODEL creating prehistoric animals reconstruction in full-scale for museums, exhibitions and theme parks. His biggest sculpture, a 16mt long Spinosaurus, got the National Geographic cover on October 2014 issue.
From 2007 to 2011 was responsible for the transformations of actors Francesco Mandelli and Fabrizio Biggio on the first 3 seasons of the tv series "I soliti idioti" aired on MTV Italy (italian version of "Little Britain").

In 2011 he starts his real career in the international film industry getting hired from Oscar winner Mark Coulier (The Iron Lady, The Gran Budapest Hotel) to be part of the team behind the creation of the zombies for Marc Forster’s "World War Z" starring and produced by Brad Pitt, and after that experience decides to move to London were he lives and works for 3 years.
In 2014 leaves London to work with Makinarium FX team as Creature Co-Supervisor for Matteo Garrone's “Tale of Tales” (starring Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek, Toby Jones, John C. Reilly) selected at 2015 Cannes Film Festival and winner of 7 Davide di Donatello awards included Best Make-up and Best VFX, and later in South Africa joins colleague Clinton Smith's Cosmesis FX crew as key prosthetic makeup artist on Sean Penn's “The Last Face” (starring Charlize Theron, Javier Bardem, Jean Reno and Jared Harris).
In early 2015 works as key prosthetic artist on Timur Bekmambetov’s “Ben Hur” (Morgan Freeman, Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro) for Lorenzo Tamburini, and after that, for the first time as HOD Makeup/prosthetics designer  on a movie, for Marco Segato’s “La pelle dell’Orso”, with Italian actor Marco Paolini (Jolefilm). Later on the same year as key artist for 4 months in South Africa on Paul W. Anderson’s "Resident Evil - the final chapter"  again with Cosmesis team on the creation of the zombie’s makeup and in addition he’s also assigned from makeup HoD Christina Smith (Shindler's list, Hook, Jurassic Park) to apply Milla Jovovich’s old age makeup, created by the studio of Oscar winner Matthew Mungle (Coppola's Dracula, Albert Nobbs).

Andrea also joined the crew of some famous TV productions such as BBC's “Dr. Who”, “Merlin” and “Atlantis”, and Movie Productions such as Jeff Wadlow's “Kick-Ass II”, Gary Shore's “Dracula Untold”, Lennart Ruff's "The Titan" and Luca Guadagnino's "Suspiria" remake.
 

In 2017, together with colleagues Valentina Visintin, Lorenzo Tamburini and Roberto Pastore, he is co-head of make-up, prosthetics and special make-up FX for Matteo Rovere's "The first king" , for which they receive a nomination for best make-up at David di Donatello Awards 2020.
 

In 2018 works as key prosthetic make-up artist for prosthetics designer Lorenzo Tamburini to transform actor Pierfrancesco Favino into the famous mafious Tommaso Buscetta, for Marco Bellocchio's movie "The Traitor".

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The Evolution...the TEAM...

2019 begins with a great challenge, to bring famous italian politician Bettino Craxi's character back to life, masterfully played by Pierfrancesco Favino for the movie "Hammamet", director Gianni Amelio (job for which they later get awarded with a "David di Donatello" statue in may 2021).

 

Andrea is commissioned to take care of the design of the transformation and together with one of his most trusted collaborators, Federica Castelli, directs the team that creates the almost 500 prosthetic appliances necessary to complete the shooting (prosthetic make-up was consisting of 9 pieces, plus dentures). The two apply the prosthetics and make-up on the actor a total of 44 times (5 make-up tests plus 39 days of shooting, from 4 to 5 hours of make-up per day).

 

Without the numerous collaborators involved it would not have been possible to carry out such an undertaking.

 

From that moment on, Andrea decides to face each new job proposal as a "team", thus a transformation begins: ALCFX is born (Andrea Leanza Creatures FX).

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In 2020, during pandemic times, the team is involved in a very thrilling project, the first original Netflix Italia horror movie "A Classic Horror Story", from directors Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli, for which they had the pleasure of being asked to design not only the straight make-up for all the movie's characters, but also 85 different masks from scratch along with fake severed animal heads, prosthetic make-up fx and blood gags...(check out a making-of video here).

Starting from that project on, Andrea is joined in leading the team by his talented partner Denise Boccacci (Denise's INSTAGRAM).

The two decides together that it's time to look for a new bigger home for the ALCFX team, and in June 4th 2021 they finally move in to their current workshop.

 

ALCFX working group is structured with some more stable trusted collaborators, and expands on occasion by making use of external professionals according to the extent of the project to be carried out.

 

ALCfx team is always open to the evaluation of the numerous portfolios that it constantly receives, and every time the opportunity arises it tries to give space also to young talents, often found during the training courses held by Andrea himself or by his expert collaborators.

 

Currently the ALCfx team is involved in various national and international television and film projects, designing make-up and prosthetics as well as giving technical and artistic consultancy, creating art pieces on commission, 3D scanning and printing services, prototyping, moldmaking and reproduction of objects in performing materials, fabricating special costumes and helmets, hyper realistic props, scenography and production design...trying not to have any boundaries in creativity.

Andrea and Denise strongly believe in collaboration and sharing both at a human and working level and so, together with other friends and colleagues, they work trying to bring this kind of “countercurrent mentality” into the special makeup FX industry.
They're also member of the cultural association EffectUs which promotes the importance of the mutual exchange of knowledge and artistic skills at a national and international level, favouring a network focused on the growth of this artistic discipline.

IMDB FULL FILMOGRAPHY LINK

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