Costume Designer Log – May 23rd, Tuesday, 2017

Yesterday was the showing of our production If An Orchid Was All You Had and I overall feel that the performance was very well received and executed to the best of our abilities. I think the costumes that I worked so hard to realize in the real world fit the aesthetic of the piece perfectly and, coupled with the hair and make-up and the set design of the piece, presented a really strong, unique, bizarre and semi-dystopian aesthetic that was the original goal of the entire design process. I feel like, once everything was fully painted and prepared and all the costumes had been tried on and practiced in, all the alterations made during the design process were for the best.

Despite this, I am regretful that I did not have time to implement some of the more intricate design points I wanted in my costumes. I feel like having some further individuality between the creatures would have only added to the general aesthetic and that the piece could have only benefited from this. If I had more time during the process to work on costume and more budget to get materials with, I would definitely have tried to create more dynamic mechanical elements within the costumes like I originally had in mind.

Working as costume designer for a show as unique and insane as this one has been a real challenge at times, however seeing the finished product on stage next to all the different pieces of set and hair and make-up really reinforces the feeling of accomplishment from having undertaken this job and seen it through to the end to the best of my abilities.

These Photographs were taken during our dress rehearsal. They show the costumes in the stage lighting and how each one of them looked on stage

References

– Lincoln School of Fine & Performing Arts (2017) IAOWAYH photos [image]. Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/with/34016768033/ [accessed 27 May 2017].

Costume Designers Log – May 21st, Sunday, 2017

A collection of shirts sewn and ready for the show tomorrow

Today we had a full day of creating set and costume ready for the show tomorrow. As you can see from the pictures above, a large majority of the costumes were finished on this day with the assistance of Becka and Rolo. I proposed to the others the idea of changing the women’s designs from having straight bottoms to skirts and there was a unanimous decision to make the change. I let Becka oversee this as she appeared to have a strong idea on how to change the designs and make them wearable, comfortable, and efficient for the cast wearing them.

Becka’s sash design before being painted or modified to make it more of a shirt

Overall I feel that the designs I originally started with have been altered for the best – be it because of time constraints, budget requirements or otherwise – and that whilst not all of my designs have been completely realized, the overall look and concept behind them has translated extremely effectively to the finished product. I am excited to see how these costumes will look once they have been finished and finalized for tomorrow’s performance.

Costume Designers Log – May 20th, Saturday, 2017

This is a shirt which has been traced around on Hessian and cut out. The hessian is waiting to be sewn onto the shirt.

As mentioned in the previous post, one of the ideas I was thinking of to create the costumes and stop them from being almost transparent was to purchase clothing that would go on underneath the hessian material. I decided this would be the easiest process even if it is the least cost effective method. My reasoning behind this is because it not only already gets me my measurements for different costumes and gives me a base to be working from, it also stops the light from rendering the hessian see-through and makes it more comfortable for the performers as the hessian is a fairly rough material and can cause irritation against bare skin.

The sewing machine sped up productivity and made making things such as the shirts, a lot easier.

As the sewing process was taking longer than anticipated and my limited skills when it comes to hand-sewing were restricting the speed and efficiency of creating the costumes, I decided it would be best to acquire a sewing machine to help me speed up the process of attaching the hessian to the clothing. Despite some setbacks (including a faulty machine for a short period of time), the sewing machine proved to be a useful and worthwhile investment as, for some elements of the costumes such as the shirts, this was extremely useful as it sped up the sewing process considerably and allowed me to focus my time on the bottoms.

For the bottoms, the majority of clothing I picked was baggy cheap jeans for the men and leggings for the women (with the exception of Kerrie who needed shorts to be able to take them on and off for the dress that her ‘Woman’ character was wearing). The jeans proved initially problematic – the dense material that jeans are made from meant that sewing through them was difficult and often ineffective – so upon further consideration I decided the best way to deal with the jeans was to upcycle scraps of hessian that wouldn’t be used for anything else and cut them into patches which could then be glued onto the clothing. This created an interesting aesthetic, making them look bulky and more distressed than the other clothing.

This is what Jake Skelton’s trousers looked like after being hessian-ed, painted and distressed

For the women, my initial ideas proved hard to realise. I was informed by Becka, the assistant costume maker, that the women’s clothing I had purchased to be the under layer was made of more elastic material than the men’s clothing, and that sewing onto them made it impossible for the women to wear the costumes as they were too restrictive due to the un-elastic nature of hessian material. To overcome this, I have planned to ask the group whether they want skirts or trousers for their costume, and alter my designs.

Costume Designers Log – May 12th, Friday, 2017

To create the templates for the costumes so that I could start creating them as soon as I got the material, I used a cosplay-method adapted from these videos (links below) to create tinfoil and tape patterns that I could stick onto the material and simply cut around to create the pattern that I really wanted. I decided to do this for a few reasons, not least of which being to increase the speed with which I could get the fabric cut out. The first person I tested this out on was Jake Skelton. The process took longer than expected but the result is something I was happy with to use as a template.

The material I initially wanted to use was upcycled burlap sacks to create the costumes. Burlap is a dense material that was featured as the key design element in the film 9 and I felt that it best represented the aesthetic of the piece. Not only this, but using pre-used burlap sacks would have been keeping within the lines of our company as upcycling set and material to create our piece. Unfortunately, the burlap I wanted to order was out of my budget for costumes, and so set designer James and I collaborated on another material that could have accomplished the same effect but been more cost-effective. The result was to use hessian dust sheets that painters and interior decorators would use to prevent marking floors or important furniture, as they were similar in terms of composition to the burlap I originally wanted to use and fit with James’ idea to utilise hessian to construct the heart atop the tree piece.

These are the Hessian sheets we ordered online for the costumes.

The material is less flexible than I initially assumed and is relatively see-through. I will need to take measures or come up with a way to prevent the lights from turning the material completely transparent. One idea I have had is to double layer the hessian, although this is costly and resource intensive, it should prevent the material from becoming transparent under the auditorium lights or any other strong lighting. Another idea I had was to purchase underneath clothes for the costume which would be less resource intensive and definitely opaque however it would increase the cost of the costumes depending on the price of the clothing.

References

– Heroes Workshop / YouTube. Duct Tape Mannequin For Cosplay Costume Building Tutorial. 2011. Web. 12 May 2017.

– Xieng Prod / YouTube. How To Make A Duct Tape Mannequin. 2016. Web. 12 May 2017.

Costume Designers Log – May 7th, Sunday, 2017

The 9 Finalized Costume Designs

In designing the costumes for Rubbish Theatre’s show, If An Orchid Was All You Had, I did some research into the kind of materials and design elements I could utilise for my designs. The first thing I did as Costume designer was collaborate extensively with the Set designer, James Crawford, so that I was staying within the plays consistent aesthetic style as opposed to creating something that looked completely out of touch with the rest of the aesthetic.

Notes taken during meeting with set designer James

After communicating with James on what kind of overall aesthetic he wanted for his set design, I could go away and look at some of the points James had brought up in the discussion. The first thing I did was to look at the aesthetic inspiration points that James and I had agreed would help with the costume; the Fallout series, Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn, Shane Acker’s film 9 and post-apocalyptic costume creator Nuclear Snail Studios on YouTube.

Cover Art for Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

An Outfit From Horizon Zero Dawn (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Firstly, I looked at Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn for costuming inspiration. The costumes and outfits within the games world have a strong techno-tribal aesthetic to them – bits of traditional clothing like furs overlaid with parts of the in-game lore’s technology – however after drafting out a few designs and comparing them to the notes I had taken from James, I felt that these designs would not work for a few reasons; practicality and aesthetic consistency being two.

Design based off of Horizon Zero Dawn

The Logo for the Original Fallout game (Interplay Entertainment / Bethesda Game Studios)

The second piece of material I looked at for the costume designing was the Fallout video game series developed by Interplay Entertainment initially and, most recently, Bethesda Game Studios. The Fallout series has long been a favourite of mine, so extensive research was not exactly necessary however research into the conceptual art of some Fallout armour, clothing, and unique characters was undertaken heavily to help understand the process the conceptual artists undertook for the game.

Concept art by Adam Adamowicz (Bethesda Game Studios)

I found Fallout to be particularly useful when designing early drafts of the costumes. I chose to focus particularly on two factions within the game world; the Raiders and the Children of Atom. The reason I chose these two factions is because of how strong their designs were, they had effectively upcycled elements of the pre-nuclear world into armour or costuming for their purposes. Where the Raiders had short clothes because of the heat, the Children of Atom had long robes that gave off a monk-like appearance. Designs I used inspired by Fallout would go on to influence my final designs.

Design based off of the aesthetics of the Fallout series

Poster for the film 9 by Shane Acker (Bazelevs Animation / Relativity Media / Starz Animation / Tim Burton Productions)

The last piece of material I used for costume inspiration is the 2009 animated film, 9. 9 features a cast of 9 rag doll like creatures that have survived in a kind of post-apocalyptic Europe and each exhibit a strong character trait that their personality and costume are built around. 9 was the final piece of material I looked at for inspiration on how to create the aesthetic of the costumes. The way that the creatures in the film looked like parts of the world and that they could have been assembled from small pieces of scrap was something I particularly enjoyed about the designs, as well as the individuality yet uniformed appearance of each character, giving them a sense of togetherness but not quite the same.

Two of the Characters from 9 (Bazelevs Animation / Relativity Media / Starz Animation / Tim Burton Productions)

After researching some of the concept art for 9, I attempted to design a costume based off the materials and designs that were featured in the film. Overall I feel that this was the largest piece of inspiration in creating my costume designs and that 9 helped me to decide the type of material I wanted and the type of look I wanted to give the creatures, these somewhat shambolic beings that exist in a world nobody will understand.

Design based on the 2009 film 9

In my final designs, I had taken my designs from each of the three pieces of inspiration and watched tutorials by Nuclear Snail Studios on YouTube (a costume designer for photoshoots and cosplay events who specializes in post-apocalyptic designs) to give me some idea on where to insert heavy amounts of detail and how to assemble the costumes that I had created. Overall I am happy with my designs, and the individual elements of each were taken from different aspects of human history or different elements expressed within the show. If I had more time and ability I would have liked to make the designs more intricate and have them feature moving mechanisms within them to make them more dynamic, however due to a limited time schedule this idea had to be removed.

References

– Guerrilla Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment. The Cover Art For Horizon Zero Dawn. 2017. Web. 7 May 2017.

– Sony Interactive Entertainment. Nora Protector Armour From Horizon Zero Dawn. 2017. Web. 7 May 2017.

– Interplay Entertainment / Bethesda Game Studios. Fallout’s Original Logo And Title Design. 1997. Web. 7 May 2017.

– Bethesda Game Studios. Concept Art For Fallout 3. 2008. Web. 7 May 2017.

– Bazelevs Animation / Relativity Media / Starz Animation / Tim Burton Productions. The Poster For The Film 9. 2009. Web. 7 May 2017.

– Bazelevs Animation / Relativity Media / Starz Animation / Tim Burton Productions. Two Characters From The Film 9. 2009. Web. 7 May 2017.