Gifts from the crypt
This holiday season, do you wish you could give your friends
and loved ones the gift of eternal, flesh-crawling putrescence? Do you pick up
bathrobes and slippers and think to yourself, “Nope, just not zombie enough”?
Do you struggle to find that one perfect present that says,
I want you to live with me forever among the ranks of the living dead?
Time to end your search.
Artist Rob Sacchetto runs Zombie
Portraits (www.zombieportraits.com), a web-based portrait service in which he
transforms photographs of living subjects into paintings of decaying,
reanimated corpses. Customers send Sacchetto a
headshot photograph, and he returns an 8″x10″ ink-and-paint illustration of the
client as a brain-chewing zombie.
Based out of Ontario,
Sacchetto has been working for years as a freelance
artist, doing portraits, caricatures, and comic book illustrations. Less than a
month ago, Sacchetto, a horror movie junkie, decided
to zombify a picture of himself. He liked what he
saw, so, on a lark, he started up the website. In just a few short weeks, the
response has been overwhelming, thanks in part to plenty of Internet buzz. “I’m
barely keeping up with orders right now,” says Sacchetto.
“It’s just been amazing.”
For $80, you receive the original Zombie Portrait painting,
which you can mat and frame as you please (Sacchetto
plans to expand into custom framing). Currently, the website only takes PayPal orders. After you order the portrait, you send Sacchetto a photo of you or the intended subject in the
preferred zombie pose. Within two weeks of the order confirmation, Sacchetto ships out the finished product.
He also does couples portraits, and, with enough time and
advance notice, larger group shots. “I’ve even done family portraits. I just
saw a mother, a father and a baby,” he says. “I’m getting such amazing photos.
People are really getting into it. It’s hilarious! I love it.”
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.
