By Alex Kantarelis

Horror nerds would love a job like this. Worcester’s Hector Aguilar, Jr. spends his days working on highly detailed display masks for a variety of clients, including businesses and private collectors. His designs dominated the Halloween Outlet 2011 product line, and most recently he’s been working with Trick or Treat Studios on their 2013 line.

Aguilar explains that creating masks as detailed and horrific as his can be an exhaustingly complicated and tedious process. The artist spends countless hours designing, sculpting, and painting each mask. It all starts with a slab of clay and an idea. Aguilar perfectly sculpts the clay into the shape he needs, and uses the sculpture to create a mold. The molding process is similar to making a Jello mold, but with Latex instead. After removing the latex from the mold, the final step is painting, which is where the mask really comes to life (or, death, depending on how gory things get!).

Aguilar got into things a few years ago, when he was studying at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. “I got into it kind of by accident,” he remembered. The final project in his sculpting class was to create a fantasy head. Aguilar’s creative mind took off, and it was then that he realized he had a knack for this type of art.

The next logical step was to attend Tom Savini’s school in Pennsylvania. For those of you who don’t know, Tom Savini is considered to be the grandfather of special effects make-up and did the effects for Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Friday the 13th and about every other gory movie you can think of ~ and he has acted in almost all of them as well (remember “Sex Machine” from From Dusk ‘Til Dawn? That’s Savini!). Without him, a lot of movies would have been a lot more boring. Under Savini’s watch, Aguilar learned all the details of high detail Latex work and sculpting, and discovered that it wasn’t just a walk in the park. “I didn’t realize how tough this profession really is,” he said. But the being in that environment taught him how to work hard for himself, and motivated him to start his own business when he got home. “I had an interview for Sears and I didn’t want to do that so I blew it off and spent the day putting together a portfolio.” It was that first portfolio that landed him a job with Worcester’s Halloween Outlet, which kept him busy for a full year.

One thing Aguilar enjoys about his profession is the fact that special degrees and certifications are not required: “This is probably one of the only businesses where you can become a wealthy by just being great. You don’t need a piece of paper saying you went to some school,” he said.

When he’s not creating his art, he is spreading the wealth by teaching classes in Worcester and Fitchburg at the art museums of each city. For people interested in learning how to create their own masks and sculptures, get in contact with either of the museums.

Worcester Art Museum: www.worcesterart.org
Fitchburg Art Museum: www.fitchburgartmuseum.org
Hector: www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100002482364778&sk=info