Sam Polin

Sam Polin fell in love with monster movies at a very early age. He would sneak out of bed and watch from the shadows of the hallway what his dad had on the TV. An American Werewolf in London was the one that stuck with Sam as perfection and eventually steered his ambitions towards Makeup FX.

In 1998, when finishing up at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Sam was being discouraged by many that Makeup FX had no future. This was due to the rise of 3D-animated creatures, with Jurassic Park standing out. Every person in the industry he contacted encouraged him to get a computer instead. With that notion in mind, he planned to join 'the dark side' and become a 3D animator.

Just a year into college, Sam was unexpectedly offered a runner position at a small shop in North Hollywood called Anatomorphex, and he returned to Makeup FX as his course in life. He was not there long and soon befriended another artist who got him brought on at MastersFX LA, where Sam spent the next 14 years working on projects such as Six Feet Under, True Blood, and Slither.

Besides sculpting, painting, fabrication, mold making, and whatever else was needed, Sam was quite often used as the shop guinea pig having test makeups applied on him. From that, he was given many opportunities to go to set as the performer in the monster suits MastersFX helped create for shows like Stargate: Atlantis, A Haunting in Connecticut, and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Though Sam's passion was with Makeup FX, he kept fooling around with the copy of LightWave he had bought while still in school. Somewhere near the end of ZBrush version 2.0, he suddenly took note of the potential it had and obsessively dove in. Soon after, he began to push the idea that “we should try printing that.” In 2014, when the Los Angeles MastersFX shop shut down, he found himself at the recently formed Fractured FX.

Just a year later, he was buying his first FDM printer and put in charge of the shop’s newly purchased 3D Systems Project. Since then, he's been heading up the 3D Department at Fractured FX for shows such as Aquaman 1 and 2, Swamp Thing, and Sweet Tooth.