Category Archives: projects: media recreations

Recreations and original costumes not bound by historical fashion.

Elsa, plans being tested and they work :)

Elsa, plans being tested and they work 🙂

Just a super short test using a test pattern.

That is the Shimmer Sheetz cut in to 10mm squares. The test cutting patterns also do rounded rectangles 🙂 The smaller the shapes the more glassy they look 🙂 So I’ll see if I can test the three materials tomorrow 🙂 And yep as that small they are hard to scratch 🙂

 

Also thanks to Chikkijet of cosplay.com I have a Disney store Elsa. And she is just sitting her reminding me. Judging me.

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Maleficent, new parks costume, maybe….?

Maleficent, new parks costume, maybe….?

Well it was made for the Social Media Moms’ event so it may or may not be permanent.

 

 

The gown in action sheds a lot of light on the train of the original. It fits to the back after all unlike her other robes.

https://twitter.com/samhowzit/status/454767382804721664/photo/1

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/13991128094/in/set-72157643806632283

(many more, scroll through to see them all)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hyku/13787915495/

And even more, scroll backwards for images from the meet and greet.

So from the recreation:

The gown is less full but is made from a knit mounted over a more stable fabric. The sleeves have extra details to reflect the original gown (deep wedges/notches at the hem of the front of the sleeves.

The headdress appears all in one and has more sculptural lines on the leather parts.

The collar sits wider, possibly not hooked to the choker, which is what I suspect may be needed.

The choker has a centre front seam.

The fabric is not purple but the lighting was used to make it so- another nod to the original.

The hem of the gown and the train is not as large as the original. Makes sense having just tried to wrangle the back alone….

There are skirt gores and they are similar to the ones in the Game of Thrones Westeros gowns. But narrower! There is a sculpted detail like a tail that covers the top of the gores and appears to go through in the recreation, it appears flatter in the original so may just be butted.

The back has a spine of some sort. Probably to cover a zipper- a good quality metal zipper as per the burlesque corset reblogged the other day 🙂  I’ll attempt a sculpted urethane piece.

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Why Maleficent? Why that costume?

Why Maleficent? Why that costume?

Costume is art. The costume can tell a tale all on its own.

So take this gown.

Why? The film hasn’t come out and even based on the leaked script (which I haven’t read) I can’t surely be a fan of either the character or the film yet? Well true, maybe not. But costume is part of the art department and what art does in any form is make you think and feel,

Maleficent’s gown is the biggest Eff You I have seen in film for a very long time. It is on the same level of brilliance as Mina’s red gown in Dracula and Michelle Pfeiffer’s catsuit in Batman Returns. It’s on par with the world building the costumes affect in Game of Thrones- where one costume spoilt me months in advance.

When you design you do not just draw pretty things or interesting lines. You have to think about the character, their mind and spirit and how they are reacting to the world they live in. And how that world responds to them

Catwoman’s catsuit was literally Selina tearing down the life she had built, and had others build around her, and reforming it. She took a practical item (at least in this bizarre world) and made it into a symbol. Her costume says yes you objectify me but I will kick your ass for doing so. You treat me like this? I’ll take that and make you regret it.

Mina’s red gown is another iteration of Eiko Ishioka’s obsession with the raw self. Being literally and figuratively ablated, exposed. It’s hard to think of it as part of the same theme as Dracula’s armour from the same movie, or the foam latex muscle suits from The Cell or the lycra and paint/cord/ink piece from Der Ring des Nibelungen. It’s a concealing dress after all.  But the texture, colour and self pattern in the form of organic leaves and striated pleats puts it firmly in place as a reminder that Mina conceals herself in the trappings of the society she lives in. In this gown she is letting herself see who she is and what she feels.

So Maleficent. What makes this gown over all her others so special?

In the world of the movie humans are very much dressed as we expect. At least what we expect from years of what Hollywood has shown us of the past. Which is mostly based on modern textures and materials, foundations and construction.

At the start Maleficent is a child of nature, her clothing is loose and flowing and not made from a drafted, and thus mass produced/industrialised. Even her other gowns seem to flow and drape with little relation to the methods used to create the costumes of humans. She is apart. And clearly so.

The gown she chooses to wear to the christening however is very complicated in structure. It mixes both draping and drafting techniques. It is fitted to the body but does not follow the lines of clothing worn by the members of the court.

Bias cutting alone makes the gown different. Bias cutting is so intrinsically different to even the most complicated multiple panel garment cut on the straight. It shifts and requires exquisite fit and shaping and multiple fittings. It is insanely personal and bespoke.

Maleficent has taken great care to dress herself splendidly for this court. Her fabric even mimics the watery weave of the king’s own robes. But again it is different. The texture is not woven but created by hand, organic and deliberately unable to be copied. A true one of a kind.

Her horns are covered but barely. The threat of nature is present though sheathed.

Her gown is bigger, more sophisticated than any other garment at the court. She outshines everyone. Yet the cut, fabric, and scale clearly single her out. No  one could mistake her as being expected or meant to be there.

Her gown says everything her speech does. It says you tell me I don’t belong, well, that’s true; I am more than you. 

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Not a new project. But actually attempting it rather than thinking

Not a new project. But actually attempting it rather than thinking

Working out the scale. I know there are kits but I get more joy from making stuff than buying it, regardless of the quality of the work out there 🙂

So, the Bo Katan concept had a trooper render as a guide to height and was mentioned as being the same body as Shaak Ti. So I scaled the two troopers and voila, yep Shaak Ti and Bo Katan are the same height in boots, so there is some foot reshaping it seems.

When I rescaled the Bo sketch I scaled all items on there including the Jet pack but I had to scale the Death Watch jetpack to the model figure as it was at a larger size.

The helmet renders are not to any scale as yet, I’ll need to resize the entire image to get a good guide to the size it should be. And that means assuming how tall Bo is supposed to be as opposed to my own height.

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Elsa screencaps and musings :)

Elsa screencaps and musings 🙂

Sparkle of doom! This is so like a big torchlight solo, oh hey given the music was written by B’Way peeps this may be part of the rationale behind her Diva gown? I think of it as her Broadway Diva gown because really  Frozen follows the beats of a musical so very well.

 

Clear view of the pointy train on the gown!

 

Even in very yellow light her cape and skirt are vastly different. And there is a box pleat right at the CB seam (also seen above.) It’s short but it is there. Might give that little wiggle room for hips?

Umm hello waist seam? Yes, yes that is a waist seam clearly showing the rectangular sequins are a separate layer to the under gown. It’s a full on gown with floating ice crystals as a bodice overlay.

So I am very glad I bought cotton tulle as I will be able to tint it for the cape and also use it help make this sheer sequinned overlayer. I know this may be an artifact of the whole CGI process but in other scenes you can clearly see the bodice move in sync and out of sync with the skirt.

 

Makeup! Okay so it’s more obvious on the big screen but this is easily achieved with red interference on a cool purple. The mixing of warm and cool tones will help muddy the tone a little. I still need some interference red to try this but I have noticed with my other interference pigments this does happen.

 

Oh look, Elsa has a tie at the end of her braid. Yes. There is a snowflake on it (which is technically the underside.)

Okay there is definitely shaping to the hem. It’s a bit hard to tell but the hem is far from a smooth line. Not sure how much is from having shaped panels- easier to show in some paper or interfacing so I will be doing some tests.

A nice clear shot of the snowflakes.

Is it wrong I see the Imperial Cog in the largest of her snowflakes? Can’t unsee it! But look at that wide opaque border of the hem.

Another look at the tones!!! And a reference for the length of the train.

Check out the notches on the hem! Very clear deep points that follow the large snowflakes but also within each motif.

Another pointy train reference, and again the very strong difference between skirt and cape colour, her bodice overlay sort of merges the two.

Clear view of the very high back- it even scoops up. Also nice clear line marking the top of the cape- like a row of bugles, or three rows of bugles. But it doesn’t appear at the front.

A reasonable shot showing how high the bust cups go.  Also sweetly goofy expression caught.

A clear view of the shape of the cape- remember how the art book says her cape defies gravity? Well here it doesn’t so she is clearly too distracted and hurting to focus. Ditto with her braid falling straight back. But you can also see how very shaped the train is to puddle like that.

 

The following sort of show how the bodice acts like a thin overlayer. Not how it collapses under the bust:

And then here is very smooth and sort of pulls up with her standing straighter. Also here you can see some of the tonal shading in the bodice- the bust is cooler and paler than towards the waist.

Here the waist looks like a regular pointed waist but you can see how it acts like a second overlay but how the lower edge of the bodice is incredibly thin, like it’s just the ice jewels.

  

And finally a snarly Elsa with lots of lovely tone on tone details on the bodice. You can clearly see the dimension of the clear/silver ice jewels are different to the flat rectangles. Also you can see how textured the ice flurry on her cape is. There are at least three layers to the cape: net/ground, opaque patterns, and finally clear textured ice particles. The ice particles are denser at the top and the opaque patterns are the same all over.

I need to check my caps for a really good clear view of the seams of the skirt because there are several seams. Like 7 panels I think.

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