I'm going into the third year of my degree now which is both extremely terrifying and exciting at the same time.
For my projects, I have chosen to interpret some already existing costumes to help make them an actuality. Below you can see my chosen images and a bit of information about my decision process:
For my third year pieces I have decided to create a costume for Doctor Strange using concept art by Andy Park for the film Marvel’s Doctor Strange (2016), and a costume for Clea, a character from the Doctor Strange comics, using art from a comic book.
The main purpose of these costumes is to try and make something that would be featured in a film or TV show since that is the line of work that I would like to go into. Alternatively, I think that is also interesting that these costumes may be used for cosplay purposes.
I chose to look into Doctor Strange because the costume used in the 2016 film is one of my favourite costumes, and I would really like to do it justice and make my own version. After finding out I couldn’t make an exact replica, I thought I would try and find some fairly similar, which is why I turned to the comics, as that is obviously where the designers got their inspiration from. By doing that, I ended up wandering into concept art, where I found the costume shown in the picture above.
I have chosen to create this costume because I’ve been a fan of Andy Park’s artwork for a while, so it immediately stood out to me, and I believe this costume is do-able in the time frame that we have, but will still allow me to challenge myself, giving me the opportunity to learn and develop skills. I particularly would like to develop my tailoring skills, because I have experimented with it in my last few projects, and would like to take it to the next level because I have found that is something that I quite enjoy. I’m hoping that this costume will also give me the opportunity to work with new fabrics and techniques so that I can build my skill set and knowledge on my way to becoming a professional.
Having made a costume for a male in my last project using a pattern, I think it will be interesting to create a piece that potentially needs to be draped on a male mannequin - which is something I am yet to try.
Knowing that I would be making a male costume, I thought that it would be a good balance to make a female costume as my second costume. I wanted my two projects to be cohesive because I liked the way that the cohesive costumes looked together in this year’s third year degree show. I decided to look into Clea because I like her character and I saw some interesting fan-art of a costume for her. I also thought that doing Clea would be a good idea because her outfit is skin-tight, which would give me the chance to work with lycra. I got to work with power mesh last year with our Marjon's project briefly, so I would like to tackle this material again so that I can become proficient in it, or at least develop my skills.
Again, I like a lot of the looks that I found online for her, but I chose to go with the one shown above because I liked the look of the leggings. I think trying to get the circular pattern onto lycra will be a challenge and a useful skill for future use. Something else that I am excited to work out is how to do the 3D shoulder pieces, as again I will have to use materials that I am not as confident with using - this I hope to change! I will also like to try and tackle the wig because I am yet to work with wigs.
I am very much looking forward to creating these costumes. We have been advised to make the more complex costume first due to time limits and what we are most likely wanting to be photographed for the end of the year, so because of this, I have chosen to make Doctor Strange’s costume in the first part of the year, and Clea’s in the second part of the year.
Stay tuned with my blog and my Instagram because I will be posting regular updates on my progress!