👹 Meet ‘Morbid Paul’: The Kenosha artist bringing monsters to life

KENOSHA, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Paul Hoepner has spent more than four decades turning his childhood fascination with monsters into an art form, creating frighteningly detailed masks by hand.

CBS 58's Alex Corradetti joined Hoepner in his home studio in Kenosha.

Hoepner spends countless hours sculpting creatures straight out of his imagination in a basement workshop filled with monstrous creations. It's there at his home where he turns curb appeal into curse appeal. 

"I'm just Paul, Monster Maker," Hoepner said.

Though over the years, he's had a few other names.

"Back in high school I was called Morbid Paul," he recalled. "My nieces and nephews used to call me Uncle Ghoulie Man."

While his nicknames have evolved, so have his masks.

"I started with this. I keep this around as a reminder of where it began… and then I look behind me, and this is where I'm at right now."

The mask he is referring to is his very first creation, a reminder of just how far his artistic abilities have come.

To understand where Hoepner's passion began, you have to turn back a few pages.

"I think I was probably 11 or 12 years old," he said. "I bought a monster magazine from the convenience store… I saw all these cool characters, and it has some photographs of how they made these monsters and I was like, 'I want to learn how to do that.'"

The magazine was Fangoria, known for its coverage of horror films and behind-the-scenes special effects.

What caught his attention wasn't simply the monsters themselves, but the work that went into making them.

"These bright colored photographs, these behind-the-scenes photos of how they made the character in that. I was like, I want to learn how to do that."

With no internet tutorials to turn to, Hoepner began teaching himself through magazines, books and experimentation.

"This was pre-internet, so I had to learn the old-fashioned way," he explained.

Hoepner remembers how difficult it was to find other people who shared his unusual passion.

"A lot of what I learned I had to learn through trial and error, or just you know the handful of books I could find, or monster magazines and stuff like that," he said.

Today, he says social media has opened the door to an entire community of mask makers, makeup artists and Halloween enthusiasts.

What started as a childhood fascination eventually became a lifelong creative pursuit. He experimented with sculpting, mold-making, casting and painting, developing the techniques that would allow him to create increasingly elaborate characters.

Four decades later, he's made an art of putting faces to our fears.

In Hoepner's workshop, creating a monster is a process that begins with a block of clay and a little imagination.

"It's kind of a vampire, Kabuki, demon, bat creature," he said, describing one of his creations.

He approaches sculpting with close attention to anatomy, building each frightening face layer by layer.

"You want to develop a bone structure. You're basically sculpting the skull underneath," he explained. "Add the muscles that attach the bone, and then you add the skin over the top of that."

Even the smallest details can make a character more unsettling.

"45-degree angles are creepy for some reason," Hoepner said.

He pays close attention to the shape of the brow, the ears, the chin and the subtle features that can turn an ordinary face into something frightening.

While many artists now rely on digital tools, Hoepner prefers a hands-on approach.

"With 3D printing and computers, and you can design characters and then 3D prints them out. I'm old school. I like clay, plaster, latex, raw material to come up with a character," he said.

The material itself is part of what makes the process so enjoyable.

"I like the feel of the clay in my hands. The you know creating the textures and and pushing the clay around and see what kind of character I can come up with," he said.

He uses an oil-based material called Monster Clay, which stays pliable rather than drying out, allowing him to rework a character as often as he likes.

And sometimes, his creations seem to take on a life of their own.

"A lot of times when I start sculpting a mask, I have no clue what I'm doing," he admitted. "The clay tells me what it wants to be, so I just follow with the clay."

Sometimes, the clay even interrupts his household chores.

"I'll tell my wife I'm going down to do laundry because that's right next to the studio, and I'll be down here for half hour, an hour, and then she'll text me and she goes, 'What are you doing? Oh, sorry, the clay, the clay was speaking to me. I had to do something,'" he said.

You could say its method meets madness.

Rather than following a strict design from beginning to end, Hoepner allows his imagination and the material itself to guide the process. Features may change, disappear or emerge as he works.

"I'm just kind of adding some wrinkles to the forehead," he explained while working on a sculpture.

And despite the frightening appearance of his creations, Hoepner feels a personal connection to each one.

"It's like this is my child, and I'm creating a part of me in the sculpt," he said.

The process is anything but quick.

"On average, a usual mask sculpt will range anywhere between 40 to 60 to 80 work hours," Hoepner said.

Once the sculpture is complete, he creates a mold, casts the mask and carefully paints the finished character, adding the textures and details that make each monster unique.

For Hoepner, painting is where all those hours of sculpting finally come together.

"The paint process is probably the coolest part because everything you just sculpted now you're adding color and detail and texture and everything in the paint," he said.

And the process doesn't necessarily end with paint. Depending on the character, he might add hair, a mohawk or even drool to complete the transformation.

All that time has helped him build quite the cast of characters.

Over the years, Hoepner has created an impressive collection of creatures, each with its own personality and, sometimes, an elaborate backstory.

One of them is Death King.

"I call him Death King, and he's basically King of the Dead," he explained. "When he decided he was going to be king, he needed a crown. He couldn't find a crown, so he busted his skull open and created this crown-like feature on the top of his head."

Another is his interpretation of Swamp Thing, a creature whose appearance draws inspiration from nature.

"This guy right here is my version of Swamp Thing," Hoepner said. "The skin texture—I went for a tree bark texture…and then he's got all the vines that are growing through it."

Paul Hoepner working in his basement studio in Kenosha.

Then there's a pirate-zombie-scarecrow, inspired in part by a beloved movie character. 

"Another favorite of mine would have to be the pirate," he said. "He's a pirate-zombie-scarecrow, kind of based off of Jack Sparrow."

For Hoepner, a mask can become more than something a person wears. It can give someone an entirely different personality.

"I think when you put a mask on and a costume, you become that character," he explained.

He demonstrated that transformation with a playful greeting in character: "Hello, love. Welcome to the haunted house."

His creations have found audiences beyond his Kenosha workshop, including haunted houses and horror enthusiasts who appreciate the craftsmanship behind each character.

"I love seeing photographs of some other actors wearing my masks," Hoepner said.

One fan in California was so taken with an ice cream-themed creation that he had its image tattooed on his arm.

"I'd never had anybody ever do that before," he recalled.

His creations have also become part of some unusual celebrations.

Along with his masks, Hoepner makes what he calls "rotten little pumpkins," small, squishy creations made from latex and polyfoam.

"I get orders from haunted houses from the east and the west coast. I had a couple that purchased like 20 of them for their wedding reception," he said.

It's another example of how his monstrous creations have found their way into unexpected places.

Despite the elaborate collection and the time involved in making each piece, Hoepner remains a one-man operation.

"Nothing is mass produced. It's you know I don't have an assembly line of people working for me. This is a one-man show," he said.

His work has also allowed him to connect with people who share his love of monsters, horror and practical effects.

"You kind of create a bond, you know, between somebody that's buying the mask and the person that's making the mask," he said.

And although his workshop is filled with frightening faces, the man behind them describes himself as relatively quiet.

"For the most part, I'm pretty quiet… I work a nine-to-five job, have a family…and then I come down here, and this is my church, my sanctuary, my release from…the hustle and bustle of every day."

For Hoepner, the basement is more than a place to make monsters. It's where he can leave the demands of everyday life behind and lose himself in the creative process.

In a workshop surrounded by monsters, he finds calm in the creepy and peace in the peculiar.

"It's a stress relief. It's art therapy, and I just enjoy the process," he said.

Even after spending dozens of hours on a single mask, he finds himself thinking about the next character waiting to be created.

"I think it's kind of an addiction," Hoepner admitted.

And while his abilities have come a long way since that first childhood experiment, he believes there's always something new to learn.

"I've been doing this for 40 years, and I'm not a professional. I'm still learning different techniques as far as sculpting goes. I'm still learning different paint processes, so I'm always learning."

Hoepner also hopes people recognize that his creations are more than Halloween decorations.

"Some people look at it as like, ooh, it's creepy, it's scary. That's you know it's not mainstream art, but actually, if you think about it, it is. There's sculpting, there's paint work, there's design work, there's creativity, there's imagination," he said.

And when people see the finished masks, he hopes they appreciate everything that went into making them.

"What you're not seeing is the 40, 50, 60 hours of work time sculpting this character. You know the changes that get made, the molding process, the casting process, the paint work," he said.

It's that curiosity that keeps him coming back to the clay, experimenting with new designs and finding inspiration in unexpected places.

He doesn't know exactly what the future holds for his monster-making, but he hopes it includes many more years in the workshop.

"I'm still kind of flabbergasted that it's evolved into this," Hoepner said. "I'm in my 50's now. Hopefully I can do it in my 60s and 70s, and hopefully the 80s… as long as I am able to do it, I'm going to keep on doing it and as long as people enjoy it, even better."

For Hoepner, the greatest reward isn't simply finishing another mask. It's knowing that something he imagined and created with his own hands can bring enjoyment to someone else.

What began with an 11-year-old boy flipping through the pages of a monster magazine has become a lifetime of creativity. An origin story molded in clay, fueled by imagination and born from nightmares. A childhood dream that, like his monsters, is still taking shape.

You can follow Paul on social media here: 

Facebook

Instagram 

Paul's masks are available for purchase. He also attends events throughout Southeast Wisconsin. Check him out!