Makeup schools or home study courses are your best option for thorough training that shaves years off trying to train on your own, but they can be rather expensive. College of course is the most expensive option and no one is going to be particularly impressed with your degree, just what you can do and what you have done although it will give you easy access to student film making projects.
Makeup effects titan Stan Winston has a makeup effects training course. Although he passed away a number of years ago, it is taught and operated by competent people.
Dick Smith was the Thomas Edison and daVinci of the makeup FX world- he invented, modified, or improved almost everything that we use in the field. He was known for his inventive genius and astoundingly generous and helpful nature. He operated a professional make up home study course for a long time, and a basic course was later added. He turned the reins over to an extremely competent make up artist to continue the work before his death. The quality of information and instructor feedback that you receive is an extremely good deal. You can get an education superior to what you’ll find in any sequence of university classes for a fraction of the cost. Be prepared to really work. The certificate you can earn is highly respected because it is awarded for the quality of your coursework, not just for completing the course. His course has produced a number of success stories.
To keep costs down even further, you can purchase text books on makeup technique then work your way through the exercises demonstrated in these books. You will still need to find good knowledgeable evaluative feedback, though. There are a variety of books on the market of varying quality. Some are decent resources but missing important information and techniques. Some with very flashy covers have little else to offer. I will outline some of the most valuable books that you can obtain. The best books are easily worth 10 inferior books in their category, so even if they are expensive, in the end they are a bargain for the dollar per pound of information.
Don’t skip anything! In makeup FX you need to know all of the techniques of standard cosmetics and stage make up and then add special effects on top of that knowledge. You can be on set and have to do an out-of-kit technique (standard in theater) on the spot to solve a problem or because of a decision made by the director.
First you need to know about standard cosmetics and that their application. You may be able to find a class locally. If not, Milady Standard Cosmetology is an expensive but extremely thorough textbook on everything you could possibly want to know about the subject. Your skin is the largest organ of your body. It is alive and requires proper care. If you know someone who has been to cosmetology school they may be able to give you lessons.
Second you need to know about theatrical makeup. Richard Corson’s Stage Makeup is the bible of theatrical makeup technique and is out of print but you can buy an e-book version from Google Books for half of what the dead tree edition went for while it was in print. Practice a lot then find a local community theatre or a high school theatre group and volunteer to do do makeup for the show.
A big part of theatrical makesup is learning to create characters and work in a stylized manner that is exaggerated enough to carry out over long distances while under strong lights. This will come in handy if doing makeups for haunted attractions and in a toned down fashion for background makeups in film work. You need to learn how to be a team player who can take direction and is part of making a successful production come together.
Third you will need to learn how to do different techniques and use different products for television and film work. This is where make up is convincing to the eye, it is very subtly stylized to work for the camera and be realistic appearing in close-ups. For film an extreme close-up may be blown up to be 70 feet across once projected onscreen. Between this and HD resolution, there is no room for anything less than exceptional attention to detail. Keyhoe’s Technique of the Professional Make-up Artist for Film, Television, and Stage is literally encyclopedic in this category. You could probably get away without owning Corson’s book if you have this, but I always advise that you have resources from multiple authors for depth of coverage of any topic of any kind.
Fourth you will have to learn the specific, highly skilled, and very involved techniques of special effects makeup. Corson and Kehoe cover some information on prosthetics, but there is a great deal more to learn here, especially with the wide variety of synthetic skins available. With CGI there is much less call for mechanical effects, but they are still used in theater and haunted attractions so it is not entirely useless to learn a bit about cable controls, air bladders, squibs (bullet hits), blood tubing and other mechanical procedures. Keyhoe also wrote a good book on special effects makeup.
For film you’ll need to learn how to make shell acrylic dentures to change an actor’s teeth and to reproduce body parts if there’s call for a duplicate severed head that matches an actor or other extreme effects. Once you are making custom prosthetic appliances (you can often get away with fairly generic ones in theater) you will have to master life casting an actor. There are a variety of videos on this. BITY has a very comprehensive one.
As you learn these techniques you need to take excellent sharp, well lit photos and build a portfolio of your work. You will eventually want to approach a special-effects make up artist or shop and attempt to get an intern position. This will be low paid (more likely unpaid) and you will get the crummy jobs that no one else wants: sweeping, cleaning plaster up, and eventually you’ll get a chance to make molds or run foam latex if you have completely mastered that extremely fussy lab skill. You are watching, learning and asking a few carefully chosen questions while you take the grunt work off the hands of the experienced artist(s) and waiting for a chance to be allowed to leap into action when the situation calls for it. It is rather unglamorous, but it is a fantastic opportunity to watch professionals as they work. No-one wants people with little or no abilities underfoot asking 1,000 questions! They want people with a fair amount of skills who need to learn the inside professional tricks and shortcuts as well as how the business end of producing extremely complex works of art actually operates when time and budget are at a premium and your reputation is on the line with every job.
If you have very little experience and skills, the best you are going to be able to do is possibly manage an apprenticeship/assistant position from someone who is an advanced learner themselves and is working for free on a play or a student film. They will need all the help they can get, so they may put up with having to teach you everything and answer a thousand and one questions. You may pick up some bad lab habits or misinformation this way, though so you should bear that in mind silently.
If you cannot find any form of apprenticeship (and that is pretty likely) you will have to study and learn as much as possible on your own and then find student films or amateur filmmakers in the area and offer to work for free screen credit on their productions if you are very fortunate they may cover the cost of your materials, and the craft services table might not be completely terrible.
You have to search under every rock and in every corner to discover if there are any opportunities for you to learn at least some of the skills in your area.
I am actively working to spread the teaching of makeup effects in high school. I have included special-effects makeup to some degree or another in my art curriculum for decades. I currently teach a double unit in prosthetic makeup design in my high school Art 3 classes and students who are in my Studio Art or Advanced Studio Art classes can choose makeup effects as their art modality of choice for those courses. I have begun giving workshops at the National Art Educators Association conference advocating that art teachers expand their curriculum in this way and I am working on a book for art teachers about this.
It is a crazy level complicated field to work in because of the wide scope of skills required and challenges like the artistic excellence needed to create a false nose that will sit on a real face and be indistinguishable when shot in close up