Celebrated make up artist and sculptor Matt Rose, who was a protege of makeup legends Stan Winston and Rick Baker, passed away last Friday at his home in Burbank, California. He was 53 years old.Rose got his big break working on miniatures for Winston on James Cameron's Aliens. He would go on to work with Winston and later Baker on such films as Invaders From Mars, Predator, Monster Squad and Harry and the Hendersons, among many others. He also contributed to Gremlins 2: The New Batch, The Nutty Professor, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Star Trek Beyond and Bright, winning a Saturn Award for his work on Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy.According to a story posted on the Daily Dead website, Rose and his best friend and business partner Chad Waters were so convinced that actor Ron Perlman would be an ideal actor to portray Mike Mignola's signature character that they used his likeness to make sculptures of the actor portraying the character to assist Del Toro in getting the 2004 movie greenlit.RELATED: Hellboy Makeup Director Calls Del Toro Films a 'Tough Act to Follow'"Once Hellboy was greenlit, Matt and Chad spent six months in Prague, working on Ron nearly every single day, and when it comes to the characters and creatures he had created throughout his entire career, Hellboy was one of his very favorites," said Heather Wixon, who had recently interviewed Rose for the horror coverage site via The Hollywood Reporter. Rose would return as a design consultant in the 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

Among the celebrities and filmmakers who posted tributes to Rose online, Del Toro posted his condolences on Twitter, stating that "if our craft ever had a golden age, he was one of the Titans."