Today, Annie Thomas has grown her audience to over 2 million followers on TikTok and gathered millions of views across social media.
Her jaw-dropping transformations have turned her into a full-blown internet sensation, proving that makeup can be so much more than just eyeliner and contour, it can be pure art.
Her rise to fame began unexpectedly with a single cosplay look that went viral.
“I originally started my Instagram to practice special effects makeup [after] being inspired by FaceOff on SYFY, but I randomly decided to do a cosplay of the character Cynthia from Rugrats,” Thomas told Allure. “That post tripled my following at the time, so I switched my focus to mainly cartoons and cosplays.”
From that moment on, her fans have been hooked.
Special effects makeup, or SFX makeup, is the art of using prosthetics, paint, and other materials to create realistic illusions on the skin, anything from monsters and superheroes to lifelike injuries.
According to Studio Binder, this cinematic craft dates back to the early days of film, when artists used flour and glycerin to fake effects, later moving on to latex, foam rubber, and airbrushing in the 1970s.
Though Annie isn’t using these techniques for movies, she uses them to turn herself into the very stars of it.
Thomas describes herself as an “unprofessional makeup artist” who taught herself everything she knows. She told Business Insider that she always had a passion for drawing, especially cartoon characters.
“Funny enough, drawing cartoons was my biggest passion as a kid—I have boxes upon boxes filled to the brim with drawings of Nickelodeon characters,” she said. “It’s crazy that it all came full circle without me realizing!”
On top of painting her face, Thomas takes things a step further by adding extra details like paper cutouts and props to complete each look.
When she transformed into Angelica Pickles from Rugrats, for instance, she combined bold face paint with precisely placed paper pieces to bring the animated troublemaker to life.
As she told Insider, “Creating full-on cartoon characters, using my body as a canvas, came very naturally to me—I’m assuming from drawing them on paper so many times as a kid. I guess it’s a weird form of muscle memory.”
Her process is as fascinating as the results.
“I typically start out by gluing down my eyebrows and applying a bald cap, this helps me visualize myself as a flat surface without any details to distract me,” she explained to Allure.
Next, she sketches out the character with eyeshadow to perfect the dimensions before filling everything in. “It just takes practice at manipulating lines to make them appear to be drawn on a flat surface, but that challenge is the fun part!” she said.
It’s a slow, meticulous art. Each look usually takes Thomas three to five hours, though some have stretched far longer. Her most time-consuming transformation, Boo from Monsters, Inc., took a staggering 12 hours.
She also doesn’t test her looks beforehand. What you see online is always the first and only take. “Everything is a first attempt for me. I just keep going until I’m happy with it. Once I’ve put four hours into a look, I figure ‘might as well put an extra two hours in to get it right,’” Thomas told Allure.
“I guess I just never go in thinking that a second attempt is an option. I’m also a soul-crushing perfectionist so I feel that I would be more disappointed in myself for giving up,” she added.
