A dash of fantasy

A recent project I worked on as designer was for a fantasy medieval student film. The overall vibe we created was one that had the sense of a stereotypical fairytale but was slightly modernized. This allowed me a much greater range during fabric sourcing. The antagonist was the character who when through the most modernisation, not wanting a cliché witch I took small extracts from the childhood imaged witch and used them not only to fulfil the look of the film, but also of add a sense of ambiguality to the characters allegiances at first.

 

For the protagonist we worked on the idea of her name. The main problem I had with this costume was that Violet (the characters name) has no definite colour; violet can be seen as completely different shades. Because of this I decided to use a light delicate colour for the dress of the girl which would have a high neckline to assist in making the actress look younger. The dress was then made to be very pale against the cloak which would also drastically stand out of the woodland indicating that the character really doesn't belong there.

Heres a couple of picture of the shoot and other costumes I designed, the villagers costumes were hired from BSP Wardrobe Hire in Bournemouth.

 

So there you go :)

Illustrations and Artwork

Heres some of my art work so far, most are created through the need to play around with programs

Telling tales

Over summer I was lucky enough to work with a wonderful crew for an underwater music video! The shoot was a fantastic experience where i designed and made the costumes with a limited budget.

The story tells of a girl flowing through the seasons underwater so here are the initial designs:

The final product can be seen here:

String up those Lily's

Over the last couple of weeks i took on some extra work, working on costumes for 2 first year films. 'Spinster lily' was a fantasy genre and 'Strings' was steampunk. the films costumes mainly needed current clothing to be styilised as there was not enough time to make the costumes from fabric. For this i asked pippa to help me out and assist me, which im so glad that she did otherwise i would probably have turned into an actual stress ball.

Spinster Lily

Spinster Lily

The Spinster lily shoot was in studland for the second day of filming which involved 3 of the 4 characters. part of these costumes were sourced at the uni's costume store and others, such as the cloaks, where made of scraps of fabric i owned which were dyed in the dye room.

The last day of filming was in talbot woods which was nice apart from the weather trying to rain. overall the costumes held up well with very little sewing needed. although i was stressed about the costumes coming together and looking right of the characters i think the colour scheme and fabrics were good. i think the cloaks could have been broken down a little, but theres no real point dweling on things that cant be changed.

Strings

Strings

Strings was a much bigger task with alot more characters, luckily alot of the costumes were recycled, using scraps of fabric to create the puppet look and paints to add metallic tints to some of the costume. pippa was able to find some amazing last minute clothes from the costume store as we didn't have enough trousers and shirts that fitted the characters. alterations and fittings were difficult for me and pippa to do and so luckily lucy helped with alterations. as there were so many characters the fitting would have taken a long time to do with just pippa and me, but holly was kind enough to help out which was amazing. danae also helped out alot with the making process, sewing on the patches on to fabric. i think with out them i would have exploded....

Despite a couple of mishaps in filming the costumes help up well and luckily suited the set. i wish i had more time to have created the costumes for both spinster lily and strings but i think the costumes that we were able to create does capture the feel of the films. it was a great experience and loads of fun.

Strings can be watched here:
Strings Short

Candide part 2

More designs:

Candide - steampunk creations part 1

for my last project we were asked to design 8 costumes based on the operatto of 'Candide'. we had to keep the costumes in context but place our own spin on things.

for my designs I decided to take the idea of the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century and expand on it, creating a bizarre contrast between 18th century character in a steampunk setting. for the main characters I kept their costumes very 18th century with hints of modernisation depending on which character. the chorus I used as an extension of the set. for the set I based the idea of it being similar to a warehouse, feeding the idea that machinery cannot change what they do...very much like the world of candide.

I created the set in a 3D program then rendered it to create two scenes.

 

  [Cont.]