Alan St. George, founder and president of Facemakers, Inc., has combined a classical training in art from The Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, (Walt Disney attended as a youth) with a hobby of creating famous monsters of filmland make-up effects.  Without the benefit of any formal business training, education or experience, and heedless of his father's caution (a tool and die-maker from the Chicago suburbs) that "you can't eat costumes" he embarked at age 19 on a career in mascot-making that has endured for 32 years.  Begun in 1972, Facemakers, Inc., is now the premier mascot company in America, employing over 20 full-time employees in the rural town of Savanna, Illinois, and shipping "the world's largest selection of mascots" to every corner of the globe.  Clients include The White House, The Olympics, Disney, and thousands of high schools and universities.

St. George recalls the company's birth:  "One day I entered a costume contest at midnight, downtown Chicago at the old Oriental Theatre, staged to promote the opening of 'Tales from the Crypt.'  That was March 9, 1972.  I spent four hours turning myself into a werewolf with rubber prosthetic appliances that I had spent weeks sculpting, casting and coloring.  These I glued onto my face with spirit gum and surgical adhesive.  Layers of grease paint and crepe wool hair were added.  Then I completed the costume with a 70's disco shirt, black trousers, and special paws I had made out of surgeon's gloves, artificial fingernails and more hair and greasepaint.  I remember that the parking garage attendant, a 6'3" man of heavy build wouldn't come and park my car...he just literally hid behind one of the giant concrete supporting pillars.  Then at the theatre, the ticket-taker screamed and waved me in without selling me a ticket.  That built up my confidence.  When I came into the lobby, a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times posed me next to a coffin and snapped my picture.  It showed up in the newspaper the next day, under the headline, Monsters on Loose in Loop."  This was big stuff for a 19 year old kid from the suburbs.  The newspaper article landed me a job promoting the movie, "FROGS!" A terrible AIP film starring Ray Milland.  I made the frog costume for the promotion, and the rest is history."