CR 055: Eddie Yang on Movies, Monsters, and Heavy Metal Masks

The entertainment industry veteran discusses his work on Hollywood’s biggest hits, his thoughts on AI, and his most memorable projects.

Eddie Yang, photo by Deverill Weekes

Over the past 40 years, Eddie Yang has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest hits, providing makeup effects, creature design, prop creation, and production design for films such as Men in Black, Men in Black II, Avatar, Iron Man, The Dark Knight Rises, and Fantastic Four, among many other titles. As founder of the entertainment design and build studio Deity Creative, he and his team also work with a wide range of clients, creating everything from costumes for Shakira’s robot dancers and the headgear for Static-X’s lead singer, Xer0, to 12-foot-tall figurines promoting the Overwatch video game.

And despite his many years in the industry, Yang says he still loves the work. “At this stage, I feel like there's almost nothing we can't make,” he says. “That's what I love about this. It's the constant challenge. The famous quote is, ‘Make it kind of like the Predator, but it’s never [been] seen before.’ There's that challenge of making something so unique a…