Biography

Chris Johnson Bio

I was born at an early age in Goodrich Michigan. I was, from what I have been told,
the only baby in the hospital at the time. This must be counted as my earliest
performance. Growing up I was your typical kid. Being the youngest of 6 children
I had the great opportunity of learning from my older siblings mistakes thus
avoiding too much confrontation. Of course we all have our moments and I am no
exception. Those stories will remain unspoken as I am not sure what the statute of
limitations is for such things. :P

I am married with 4 great children who inspire me every day to be all I can be. I
learn through them that life is what we make it. I see such creativity in them and
great ideas. My family is very supportive of my wacky endeavors and support my
weird ideas.

My mother has always been such a great inspiration of hard work and
accomplishment and taught all of us to work hard and to do things right. She is
such a wonderful woman and I can say she, with such great patience, sat many
hours waiting for me while I would go to the comic book shop or to the magic shop,
which she would drive me to, for me to browse to my hearts delight. She
supported my aspirations of becoming the next Edgar Bergen or David Copperfield
and smiled when I would rush home with a new trick and want to show her as soon
as we got there. Of course I had not had adequate practice time but she was
there as my audience.   She is without a doubt the top of the list when it comes to
Mothers who love their children and went to every length to provide. For that I am
forever indebted.

My interest in magic and Ventriloquism came when I was around 12 years old. I
recall spending an early weekend morning trying to tune in an offbeat television
channel to get a better picture of what I now know was an Edger Bergen movie.
The move was Look who’s laughing. It was an instant fascination with Bergen and
how he made his dummies speak. Being from a smaller community at the time
there really was no access to a magic shop so the ventriloquist bug passed.
Years later when my mother wanted to go to a magic shop to buy some tricks for
my older brother to perform at our nieces’ birthday that I was introduced to Romig
magic shop. The shop was in an upstairs store and it was love at first sight. They
had tricks of every kind and when my lusting eyes were scanning the shelves I
spied 2 professional size ventriloquist figures. Well I knew that was something I
had to have. Well I never did get one of those dummies as for a kid my age they
were out of my price bracket, which was very small at the time if at all. However my
trips to the magic shop did not stop and I would on occasion get a ride form my
mother who very patiently waited while I asked a myriad of questions of the sales
staff and made my small purchases with what little funding I could secure each
trip. Once I was able to drive I would make the trek on my own or with friends to
the Mecca of Detroit area magic shops. Picking up small tricks and leaving with a
beaming smile and new things to attempt to master. Well I typically never
mastered any of them but the magic bug did not fade it just took a different
direction and was often left aside for other endeavors.    It was in the 10th grade
when I had made contact with a woman representing the Verna Finly line of soft
sculptured puppets that I found my first professional ventriloquist figure. She had
a figure created by Bill Anderson that she agreed to sell me for the princely sum of
$325.00. A kings ransom for a 16 yr old. I sold my comic book collection to make
the $50 down payment and agreed to send payments as often as I could. With the
gracious help of my mother, who created an allowance program for doing the
house chores where I made $20 per week, I would stow away every penny I made
and send it to pay for the figure. I recall the day we went to make the final
payment and pick him up. I had decided to name him J.P., short for John Paul.
After the pleasantries and chatting we left her home with my new partner in tow.
He was a basic figure with moving mouth and eyes. We spend many hours talking
to one another with a small degree of success learning the art of ventriloquism. As
High school continued my trips to the magic shop were still a highlight.
Ventriloquism always being my first love in the arts of deception. In the mid 80's I
signed up for the Maher home Study Course in Ventriloquism. The course is such
a great resource and the best source for learning Ventriloquism.

As time went on and I grew older I realized my other passion, make-up and make-
up fx. I recall days in my youth of playing army with friends and we would get
makeup or a misting bottle from his house and pretend we were filming a war
movie. Now I guess I never realized at the time what make-up for films was about
but we knew it was needed to create the look. It wasn’t until I was married and had
my first son that I realized what fun was to be had making someone look like a
creature or like someone else. It was then that I discovered things such as foam
latex, morticians wax, and collodian. I would spend hours sometimes after the kids
were in bed distorting my face only to wash it off again..but the practice is always
needed and a great way to become familiar with products.   Using books I learned
about sculpting for foam latex prosthetics and mold making. Slowly creating a
zombie here or an old person there. I discovered that the greatest make-up artist
of all had a correspondence course available. One day while wanting to learn
more about how to make a multi piece prosthetic I had read an article in Cinefex
magazine and it said this make-up artist lived in Larchmont New York. I called
telephone assistance and asked for his number. When I dialed the number and
the voice on the other end answered it was like calling an old friend. His name,
Dick Smith. He is one of the kindest and most giving of information of anyone you
could ever hope to meet. We talked for over 45 minutes about dividing sculptures
and processes. He did not know me from Adam and yet spent such a long time
offering his guidance. To this day I cherish the notes I had written while on that
telephone call. It was a few years later that I had enough money to apply for the
first portion of his correspondence course and sent off some photos. I anxiously
awaited his reply and when it came he advised me to do more work and resubmit
photos before he could allow me to invest in his course.   The truth is I was
somewhat disappointed but also realized the dedication to the craft was needed
before he would allow you to spend your money on his course. If he felt you would
learn and grow from his course and had the basics then, and only then, would he
allow you to spend the money for the course. This is truly a rare facet in the
business world and shows his dedication to the art of makeup and makeup fx.
The biggest regret I have is the lack of good picture taking during the years of test
makeup’s. I still enjoy the creation of makeup fx and try to make time for personal
projects in between family and work. The creative side of me love to make things
and what better way to create something then to turn a child into a creature or to
believably age someone?

Stop Motion animation is another part of my desire to create. When I was a kid
watching the Rankin and Bass Christmas specials I was always mesmerized by the
look of each person, the way they moved and the stories they told. At the time I
did not know how it was done, but I loved every second of it. Later I learned that
every second meant 24 individual photos and individual poses of each character in
the scene. Stop motion animation requires many of the same skills I work on doing
makeup fx so creating the models wasn’t a huge challenge. Animating, there’s the
real challenge. To move each character a fragment of an inch then take the frame
and continue doing this to achieve smooth movement might not sound hard, but it
is a HUGE challenge!!!    Then, to see what you created walk in the world you built,
well that’s just plain cool. And as a hobby, Animation is a way to focus and escape
the rigors of day to day stresses and experience the rigors of animating..hehe, well
they are different stresses but fun and exciting.