If the zombie apocalypse were to hit today, would you be able to survive?

Rob Sacchetto thinks he has what it takes to stay alive and fend off the flesh-devouring living dead. With years of experience studying zombie lore, and having penned The Zombie Handbook: How to Identify the Living Dead and Survive the Coming Zombie Apocalypse, he may just be able to make good on that boast – not that there would be anyone around to brag to should zombies invade.

His first instinct would be to hole up in a convenience store, where he would have access to food and water. Sacchetto said he would bring a variety of weapons with him, but a must-have would be a sling shot, just in case he runs out of ammo.

“My No. 1 thing to do would be to high tail it to a convenience store and lock myself in it. Other than that, head for high ground, so you can see zombies coming from a long way away.”

Devoting more than 60 per cent of his day to zombies, it's safe to say Sacchetto eats, breathes and sleeps the living dead. And it's turned out to be quite the lucrative venture, considering he's making a living off of death.

From as far back as he can remember, Sacchetto wanted to be an artist. While his classmates all through his scholastic career were striving for As and Bs on their report cards, Sacchetto was drawn to monsters. It was in high school that he got his first taste of the financial reward for his artistic ability, and the rest is history.

Now, he turns people into zombies for a living. He has created more than 2,000 zombie portraits, depicting zombiefied real people across the world.

“Six years ago, I was doing zombie portraits of my wife and I, and a friend of mine, who thought they were interesting, whipped up a website to show them off,” Sacchetto said. “Literally, overnight, I was inundated with orders; so much so, I could barely keep up. That continues today, and that's how I make a living.

“I work in the medium of zombies. I do book covers for authors, album covers for musicians, and they are all zombie related.”

His drawings have garnered international press coverage, and his talents drew interest from author Jonathan Maberry, who featured the Sudbury artist in the fictional series Rot and Ruin as an 'erosion artist.'

Now, Sacchetto is showing off a variety of his work at Fromagerie Elgin. More than Monsters is on display from July 4-31 at 5 Cedar St.

“I wanted to have a bunch of my new works, stuff that I finished even just last week,” he said, describing what people will find at Fromagerie. “There's also a lot of my older, crowd-pleasing work and some of my more mainstream work. I wanted this show to have diversity, and for it to not just be about zombies.”

Any fan of the zombie genre can likely trace back their passion for gore to one moment in time when they first became afflicted with zombie-ism. Like many others, for Sacchetto, it was Night of the Living Dead, but his favourite zombie flick of all time is the 1985 feature Return of the Living Dead, and it was that movie that “sparked” his interest in wanting to draw even more zombies.

“Every zombie (in Return of the Living Dead) is different; each one had its own personality,” he said.

George Romero would be the knee-jerk reaction for most when it comes to naming their favourite zombie-flick director, “but for me, it would have to be Dan O'Bannon and Return of the Living Dead. That movie literally changed my life.”

Sacchetto is also author of the website, zombiedaily.com, where he posts a new zombie drawing or painting every day. To date, there are more than 1,200 entries on that site, he said. His second book is titled Zombiewood, The Celebrity Dead Exposed.

Posted by Arron Pickard