Medea + new shoes!

So, life's been pretty changeable since last time I blogged.  That's pretty much the way it is, working as a freelancer, you can have a couple of weeks of just twiddling your thumbs with absolutely nothing to do, and then suddenly find yourself frantically working on four different projects at once!
This would be one of those times.

The main project I'm involved in right now is a production of Medea, by Euripides.  It's actually being staged in the ruins of London's Roman Amphitheatre, under the Guildhall Art Gallery, and we're trying to make it as close to the original way it would have been performed as possible, with an all-male cast, a chorus, and all the actors in masks.
I've actually branched out into Set Design for this show, which is proving interesting - and tiring, painting a backdrop is quite a workout!
Here's a sneak peak of how it looks so far:

The doors, before painting.

In completely unrelated news, my 1920s t-strap shoes from American Duchess arrived today and they're gorgeous and really nice quality to boot! (pun unintended but enjoyed nonetheless)
My feet are annoyingly between sizes so I went a size up to be on the safe side.  The shoes are a smidgen too large for wearing with regular tights, but they look lovely worn with some nice knitted socks, dontcha think?

(please forgive the crappy angle, it's difficult to get good photos of shoes when they're on your own feet!)

Helga - Weymouth Maritime Mix

So, I never did get round to talking on here about the delay in Helga's grand debut.  Mostly because at the time it was too depressing, then afterwards I didn't really want to make myself glum by thinking about it too much.
To recap, I made Helga (see previous posts) to appear in the Spirit of the Sea Carnival in Weymouth, which this year was made to coincide with the Olympic Torch Relay to celebrate its arrival in Weymouth.  Unfortunately, when the day came there was such torrential rain (literally, there were flash flood warnings all over the South West that week, it wasn't messing about!) that the parade had to be cancelled.  This was gutting for everyone, especially the organisers who'd put so much effort into making it happen in the first place.  And it wasn't just me and the other 3 large scale costume students that had been working for months on it, there were a group of 2nd years that had been leading around 800 or so school children in making costumes for themselves to wear in the parade.  It sucked, basically.
Anyway, flash forward to September 9th and it was finally Helga's chance to shine! (and luckily the sun did too)  This time round we were there to mark the end of the Paralympic Games, and it was fabulous!

There was a last minute switch around with the performers, since my fellow costumier, Immie, who was meant to wear it, no longer had an actor to perform in her own costume, and wanted to wear it herself.  Luckily Gabby stepped in, and I couldn't have asked for a better performer!  One thing about Helga is that she gets heavy.  I tried to make her out of the lightest materials possible; plastazote foam and pvc pipes, but even so, after an hour or so you're going to really feel the weight - especially with the coastal winds we had to contend with as we were going along the promenade.  But Gabby was an absolute trooper, not only did she look the part with her bright green hair, she battled the wind without complaint and posed and smiled for photos for all the crowd.  And wow, the crowd!  I have never had so much adulation in my life before.  I'd been put in the procession as a motivator, been given a costume from our stockroom to wear, and put next to Helga/Gabby to be on hand should anything go amiss.
It meant that I was right there to hear all the praise and see all the excited pointing fingers and variations of "Oh my god, it's the fish from 'Finding Nemo'!"  Not only that, but because we were right at the back of the procession as a kind of grand finale, the crowd would all cheer as we passed them by.  I tell you, it made all the blood, sweat and tears that went into making her all fade into insignificance.  I definitely want to do Carnival again, if only for the 2 hours worth of ego stroking at the end of all that work!
Anyway, photo time:

And some I nicked from the Moving Tides Procession facebook page:

Me walking alongside looking chuffed (and a little bit concerned for Gabby's back!)

I love how this one shows the vibrancy of it all.  Also, you can see my friend Jess in the  foreground wearing her sunset (or sunrise?) costume.  Had a minor hiccup in that someone forgot to pack her poles, but she was able to scrounge some from some unused costumes and bosh it back together in time - it looks fab!

My favourites were the dinosaurs.  The procession was 'ocean-themed' but  because  we were on the Jurassic coast line there was a big fossil theme within that.  The dinosaurs were amazing!

Athletes Parade – Lion Puppets

Ok, so in my previous post I probably somewhat exaggerated the secrecy involved in this project for dramatic effect, but the Athletes Parade has been and gone now so I’m free to post to my heart’s content.  For those who don’t know, the Athletes Parade was a big event in London to mark the end of the Olympic Games, in which all the British Olympic and Paralympic athletes paraded by on floats, various important people made speeches, and the Red Arrows flew over Buckingham Palace trailing red white and blue smoke to mark the occasion.  All very nice indeed, however, the highlight of the event was clearly the two lion puppets based on the British Olympic Association &British Paralympic Association logos that headed up the parade.  Obviously.  And I am of course in no way biased by the fact that I helped make them.

Source - Flickr photoset: rubenarakelyan

Source - Belfast Telegraph

Source - Flickr photoset: rubenarakelyan

Aren’t they fantastic?  They were built by Kinetika, with Tony Mason and Iola Weir leading the make, and I was lucky enough to get involved for a couple of weeks in their Stratford studio.  I’d previously met the guys from Kinetika when they came to my university to help out with the flag-making for the Weymouth procession (more on that later!) and they were able to advise me on Helga’s construction too.

Working on the lions was really interesting.  It’s amazing how creative you can be with quite simple materials.  The frames for the lion heads were made entirely out of fibre glass and aluminium rods bent and bolted or taped into position.  These were then covered in fabric, and mounted on a purpose built backpack to be worn by the performer.  These were built along very similar lines to the backpack I made for Helga, except that instead of plastazote foam heated and moulded to echo the contour of the back, aquaplast was used in its place.  This was a very nifty material, quite rigid and plastic-y at room temperature, but when you heated it up in boiling water it would become quite limp and flexible, and so could be moulded over the back of a mannequin, returning to its original rigidity in 5 or 10 minutes.

Covering not finished yet, so you get better look at the frame

Inside of one of the lions from behind

Backpack - the aquaplast was also used for those 2 white channels that the aluminium slots into

The manes that flow out behind the lion heads and are held up by other performers were a massive job in themselves.  First getting the acres and acres of fabric all cut out, then binding it all with white bias binding, then roding it all up with fibre glass and nylon rods.  Knowing which rods to use seems to be an art form in and of itself, a whole ton of difference will ride on whether you’ve used a 3 or a 3 ½ mm diameter rod when it come to the movement of the mane in the end, and knowing which ones to use seems just to come with experience.

I thought I’d leave you with a few photos of other things that grabbed my attention from Kinetika’s studio whilst I was there. Enjoy!

(Hanging upside down from ceiling so I flipped the picture)

Next post:  Weymouth Parade (Helga’s debut!)

Hmm well, this blog appears to have become a ghost town again.  Not to worry, I have an exciting project to talk about soon, but I'm not allowed to show it until after the Athletes Parade through London on the 10th of September.  It's all terribly hush hush, you understand?

In the meantime, here's something I made earlier this (academic) year, before I got carnival fever and started producing giant things in garish colours!
It's a Victorian bustle dress for the character of Miss Prism, from The Importance of Being Earnest, and it's modeled by the very lovely Mary Clarke, a fellow costumier extraordinaire!

Peace Out x

Glorious Helga

Of course, when I said that this blog would be horribly neglected until May 15th, what I meant to say was that it would be horribly neglected until July.  Whoops.

Anyhoo, Hand In's been and gone, the Exhibition got dismantled last week, so now all that's left for Helga is Weymouth Carnival, on the 12th of this month.  And by Helga, I am of course referring to my beloved angler fish.  Photo time!

Helga looming over the exhibition space.

Being worn - the painted highlights show up better outside.

From the back - showing how she fits on to the performer underneath.

Aaaannnnndddd, rather excitingly, SHE'S ON THE BBC WEBSITE!!  Admittedly it's only the local news, and they do manage to confuse the Moving Tides Carnival with the Battle for the Winds Ceremony that happened about a month ago.  Easy mistake really, since they're both in Weymouth, and students from AUCB did make costumes for that too.  I'm not complaining though, I'm just completely psyched that Helga's getting so much recognition - the same photo was used to illustrate the exhibition page on the university website as well, which is rather exciting in itself.

So there we go.  I graduated last friday, which hasn't really sunk in yet.  I'm still in Bournemouth until after the carnival, so maybe I won't really feel like I've stopped being a student until I leave here for good.  It's sad to say goodbye, really.  Part of me would adore being an art student indefinitely.  The last few months spent almost entirely in the workshop meant that I got friendly with a few of the students from modelmaking, and that's another area I'd love to explore more.  If only I could stay on for another 3 years and get a degree in that too! 

But no, in truth I think I'm ready for something new.  I have no idea what I'm going to be doing six months from now; and although that's a rather daunting prospect, it's also rather thrilling. 

Watch this space! 

Angler fish progress

This blog will continue to be horribly neglected until after Hand In (May 15th!), but here's a little preview of how my angler fish is looking lately:

The frame is almost finished, just got to add a couple of extra poles to the front to hold up the lower jaw.  The plastazote fish skull is getting there as well.  Here's my design concept if you need a reminder.  My plan this week is to get them both finished and stuck together (they're just held with masking tape in this photo to check the positioning) and to cut out and add on the ribs and fins too.  Then next week I can add the lure, paint it all and add the teeth too and then it'll be complete!  I'm counting down the days..

Designing vs making

Still hard at work on my angler fish costume.  I'm working on the understructure right now, but also having a mild to medium panic (the type where you can't sleep because your heart's beating too fast and your brain is continuously whirling on about how to make this bloody costume) because my budget doesn't cover getting the plastazote I wanted for the outer shell, and I need to get started on it now!

Anyway, digressing for a moment, this project got me thinking today about something one of my tutors said at the end of our first year when we deciding whether to specialise as designers or makers.  A lot of us (including yours truly) were really conflicted.  I adore both, and find that one without the other is nowhere near as gratifying as a project that you get to build up from a germ of an idea to a realised costume all off your own back.  I love designing, but it wouldn't feel right for someone else to make the costume for me.  And likewise, interpretting someone else's vision is fine, but I much prefer exploring my own.  I think a lot of it comes from the way I design, which is very unstructured.  I'll start developing an idea, but then it'll always evolve as I'm making it.  I'd never be able to complete a final design before starting on construction without feeling very constricted by the limits I'd set myself!

But unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the way the costume industry works, and costume degrees have definately changed to reflect this over the past few years.  In Bournemouth (my uni) it used to be that you didn't specialise until 3rd yr, but by the time I started, we had to choose a year earlier.  In Wimbledon you have to choose right from the start!  So you end up doing a degree either wholly in costume design or wholly in costume interpretation.  I suppose it makes sense, as so many jobs are just too big for one person to handle, so obviously you're going to need specialists in the various fields; but then there's the fear of being labelled as just a designer or just a maker, and then finding it increasingly difficult to balance your work load to include both.  That's my fear anyway.  I ended up specialising in making, by the way.  I decided that I'd be able to learn a lot more practical skills from my tutors that way; and therefore be able to confidently create more of my trickier ideas.  It does leave me worrying that I don't have a lot of experience in design though, and I worry that I might be passed over for a design job because of my specialism in making.  Only time will tell.

Anyway, to get back from that mini rant to the point I was making about my tutor's comment.  One of her arguments against people being both a designer and a maker at the same time was that ones prior knowledge of construction would tame the design.  She argued that someone who knew how to make would be constricted by their preconceived ideas of what was possible to make.  A designer with less constructional skill, however, who designs without wondering how it'll be put together, might be able to come up with something new and original that would force their construction team to find innovative ways in which to make it.

At the time I remember thinking this an unfair generalisation, but it still concerned me.  Would my developing skill in construction hinder my more "out there" design concepts?  Was becoming a better maker making me a worse designer?

In a word, no.  And this project has proved that.  If anything, my increasing knowledge has led me to make my designs MORE challenging.  There's no fun in designing something if I already know exactly how to make it, and I adore figuring out new materials and new ways of constructing that I've never tried before.  I've always been an overachiever in all my creative endeavours, and that's a further reason why I wouldn't want to design for someone else to make.  I have ridiculously high expectations of myself, but if someone else was completing the construction side of this project for me it would be unthinkable to expect them to put as much into it as I'm doing, and it would be unfair to ask them.  But I never learn when it comes to giving myself a shit load of work to do!  I've truly jumped in at the deep end with this unit, and as terrifying as it can be, I wouldn't have it any other way.


Anyway, unfortunately I don't have any good progress shots of my fish costume to round off this post with, as it's still very much in pieces, but here's a photo of a ballroom dancing dress I made for my cousin last summer.  That's not her wearing it, my cousin's a bit shorter so it comes to a nicer ankle length hemline on her, I just don't have any photos!

Laterz