When it came to putting forward an episode of The Walking Dead to be considered for an Emmy Greg Nicotero had only one in mind – the season one premiere featuring an iconic zombie from the comics known as 'Bicycle Girl'.
Her makeup posed a problem since she is missing the lower half of her body but still needed to be able to crawl.
“We ended up putting her in blue leggings so that the visual effects guys could remove the bottom half. So the top was all prosthetics. People could not figure out how we did it. There was a big internet debate and some fans said it was a puppet. Others insisted that she was full CGI,” Nicotero told Deadline.com.
Nicotero and the KNB EFX Group team are nominated for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Mini-series, Movie or a Special.
The effects maestro also praised the actors in the other outstanding scene in that season premiere, where a horde of zombies attack a horse.
“The zombie extras were literally whipped into a frenzy because this was the first chance they’d gotten to eat somebody,” Nicotero recalls.
“When they yelled action, all the zombies dove in and were actually fighting over the guts. And when we were done rolling, it was like a badge of honour. None of them wanted to clean off the blood and guts. If you’re a zombie extra, that is what you live for.”
