Metamorphosis Make-up Artistry

About Crist Ballas

Crist Ballas started his childhood with diverse passions for make-up, acting, humor, music, and fine art which significantly contributed to his chosen profession. Ballas specializes in a natural "no make-up" look including beauty, corrective and ultra-realistic character make-ups. His skills include but are not limited to: research, design, chemistry, anatomy, moldmaking, producing and handling facial or body prosthetics, wigs, dentures, custom contacts and mechanical creatures.

Ballas’s pursuit of realism and detail in sculpture, translucent materials and painting is cutting edge. He has an excellent insight, respect and rapport with actors, helping them in many ways to realize their full potential as performers. Ballas studied under the legendary Dick Smith and has been a dedicated professional in the make-up and film industry for over twenty years.

Ballas owns and operates Metamorphosis; a full service make-up shop and studio that provides teams of make-up artists, designers, professional operators, skilled puppeteers and more. In between projects he oil paints classical portraiture, teaches at the University of Minnesota and creates medical prosthetics. Ballas feels his greatest creation to date is his daughter Matia.

Crist Ballas resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.

This biography is restored verbatim from the original metamorphosismakeup.com, archived circa 2003.

Crist Ballas

Special Make-Up Effects Artist
Owner & Supervisor, Metamorphosis Make-Up Artistry — St. Paul, Minnesota

Summary

Special make-up effects artist with a career spanning over 30 years in film, television, and commercial production. Specializes in natural "no make-up" looks, beauty and corrective makeup, and ultra-realistic character prosthetics. Refined his techniques under the tutelage of legendary make-up artist Dick Smith. Skilled in research, design, chemistry, anatomy, mold-making, and producing and handling facial and body prosthetics, wigs, dentures, custom contacts, and mechanical creatures.

Awards & Recognition

• Academy Award — member of the winning make-up team for Star Trek (2009); created the character Keenser (Deep Roy)
• Emmy Award (2011) — Upper Midwest chapter, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, for make-up work on a Periscope commercial (“Hair”)

Selected Film & Television Credits

Skills & Specialties

Research · Design · Chemistry · Anatomy · Mold-making · Facial & Body Prosthetics · Wigs · Dentures · Custom Contacts · Mechanical Creatures

Teaching & Studio

Teaches at the University of Minnesota. Owns and operates Metamorphosis, a full-service make-up shop and studio providing teams of make-up artists, designers, professional operators, and skilled puppeteers.

Note: the original resume page on metamorphosismakeup.com was a single image file that was not independently preserved by web archives, so it could not be recovered as-is. This resume has been reconstructed from publicly available sources (IMDb and Crist’s own archived biography) to restore the substance of his professional history.

Crist Ballas had a Wikipedia article from at least 2015 until it was soft-deleted on July 7, 2022, following a low-participation Articles for Deletion discussion citing insufficient sourcing (the nominator couldn’t verify the listed Emmy/Peabody awards in official databases). This page reproduces the last version of that article (as of June 30, 2022) under Wikipedia’s Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, for reference while a proper restoration is pursued.

Crist Ballas

Born: Crist J. Ballas, August 11, 1965, Saint Paul, Minnesota, US
Occupation: Make-up Artist
Years active: 1981–present
Organization: IATSE
Children: Matia Angeline Ballas
Parents: Nick "Bill" Ballas, Angeline Andrews Ballas
Awards: Emmy Award (2011), Peabody Award (1993)

Crist Ballas (born August 11, 1965, in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is a make-up artist for film and television. Ballas owns and operates Metamorphosis Make-Up Arts, a make-up and prosthetic laboratory located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A childhood passion for the classic Universal monsters, coupled with a love of the fine arts, led Ballas toward the study of makeup. His career began in 1981, and he further refined his make-up techniques under the tutelage of the legendary Dick Smith. He is known for his work in natural, beauty and ultra-realistic prosthetic makeups.

Ballas spent seven years as a make-up artist on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 and supplied make-up and effects for the 1996 feature film and the spin-off The Mystery Science Theater Hour. He also worked on five films for Arnold Schwarzenegger: Jingle All the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day, and Collateral Damage. In 2009, Ballas was part of the Academy Award winning makeup team for J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek. His television and movie credits include: The Straight Story, A Simple Plan, Sweet Land, Double Jeopardy, Reindeer Games, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Mallrats, and The Love Guru.

Ballas also taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota for the BFA program, and ran a research laboratory in the medical simulation department.

References (as cited in the original article)

• "Emmy® Recipients" (retrieved 2012-05-31)
• "Crist Ballas Movopia" – Emmy Recipients (retrieved 2012-06-02)
• Fletcher, Jacquelyn B. (2000-10-01). "It’s Alive." Minnesota Monthly, Greenspring Media Group
• "MetaMakeUp Crist Biography" (retrieved 2012-05-17)
• "Crist Ballas IMDB" (retrieved 2012-06-02)
• "Crist Ballas Linkedin" (retrieved 2012-06-02)
• "Crist Ballas TV.com", CNET Networks Entertainment

Text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article "Crist Ballas" (as of June 30, 2022), available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0.

A few other independent sources documented Crist’s work over the years. Excerpts below, with links to the original archived pages.

Memory Alpha (Star Trek wiki)

Crist Ballas is profiled on Memory Alpha, the official Star Trek wiki, for his work on J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek as part of the Proteus Make-up FX Team:

"Crist Ballas is a special make-up effects artist who worked on Star Trek as part of the Proteus Make-up FX Team. Hailing from (and currently residing in) St. Paul, Minnesota, Ballas specializes in natural, realistic make-up effects. He owns and operates Metamorphosis, a full-service make-up shop and studio. For Star Trek, Ballas worked on the character Keenser, portrayed by Deep Roy, and a Talosian who was ultimately deleted from the final movie.

Ballas spent four years as a make-up artist on the cult television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 and supplied make-up effects for the 1996 feature film spin-off of that show. He also worked on five films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger: Jingle All the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day, and Collateral Damage. His other film credits include The 13th Warrior (1999), A Simple Plan, Drop Dead Gorgeous (starring Kirstie Alley and Kirsten Dunst), Paramount Pictures’ Double Jeopardy (1999, starring Ashley Judd and Bruce Greenwood), Reindeer Games, Sweet Land, and The Warlords. Other projects include The Forbidden Kingdom (2008), The Love Guru (2008), and the WB reality series Beauty and the Geek."

Source: Memory Alpha, "Crist Ballas" (archived copy), available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

The Growler Magazine: "Crist Ballas, The Mad Scientist of St. Paul"

In February 2020, The Growler, a Minnesota arts and culture magazine, published a feature profile of Crist by writer David Scheller, with photography by Madalyn Rowell. The piece is a tour of Crist’s home studio and a look at how he got started in the craft.

The article describes his home lab — a vintage Frankenstein poster, acrylic prop eyes he made and labeled for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlize Theron, an original Gizmonic Institute patch from his years on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that he says he treasures more than his awards, a full-scale Arnold-as-Mr.-Freeze bust, and an anatomically accurate breast prosthetic he developed as a University of Minnesota project to help train doctors and patients to identify cancerous tissue by feel. It traces his origin story back to seeing the original 1931 Frankenstein at age six, his mother taking him to the library afterward, and discovering Richard Corson’s Stage Makeup and books on Lon Chaney — the start of a self-taught path into the craft years before he formally trained under Dick Smith.

Read the full article at The Growler (archived copy) →