She Kills Monsters
Costume Research
Production Meeting Notes
June 7: Jason, William and I are going to be building the puppets and other armor/weapon items over the summer so rehearsals can begin with those items immediately after the play is cast. I've already started pulling things from storage that might be useful. Jason, William and I met up at school and had a good catch up, post pandemic, and began talking about the show's requirements. I showed them my slides to give them an idea of where I was going. Jason showed up with his research and he did some sketches too. We discussed all the monsters in detail and how big or small they should be and where they should be a puppet or a human. I started pulling some things out before we all went on our vacations. When we get back we've decided to meet up every Tuesday evening at 6 to work on the show. In the meantime I ordered the 3 volume set of the Advanced D&D books for research, as well as downloaded a bunch of free cosplay patterns for foam armor.
June 22 We started by pulling anything out of storage that we thought we might possibly use. Armor, gloves, helmets, fur suits, masks, capes, belts, unitards etc.. We spent four hours doing that. That night I ordered EVA foam and supplies to work with it. Later I went back in with my husband and started labeling racks and sorting the pulled items and grouping them into monsters or playable characters. I pulled more things that I hadn't thought of before, like the Globolinks aliens costumes, the Ramayana demon costumes and tree costumes, the Medea masks, the Medea skirts, the Tempest Dryad unitards, We paired up gloves.
June 29 We used the fist hour just to print out all the patterns we'd collected. I bought Punished Props patterns and Jason bought several sets of cosplay patterns by Kamui Cosplay. We spent the next hour sorting, labeling, and putting them in envelopes as well as choosing which patterns we'd use for which character. Then we spent the rest of the night cutting out patterns for two hours. We realized we were going to need more foam so I bought round foam ropes, pool noodles, octopus fingers, and a second pair of painter's stilts. Later in the week I picked up the scissors from Ludwigs where they were sharpened, and brought up my heat gun, some more patterns, and my dremel tool. www.kamuicosplay.com/product-category/patterns/
July 6 We cut out all the patterns and notched them. William and I cut the hats off the of the flying monkey masks and patched them.
July 13 We cut out the kobold skull pattern and sized it up to fit a human head. The upper jaw was too small but the lower jaw was just fine. We blew up the upper jaw pattern pieces 150%
July 20 Traced all the horn patterns onto the foam. We need one pair for Ocus, Lilith, and the two succubus cheerleaders. We also traced out the kobold skull pattern pieces for one Kobold, but we need three.
July 27 cut out the horns and Tilly's armor, William was sick. Jason glued together the greaves for Tilly,
Aug 3 Cut out the rest of the Kobold Skull mask pieces for a second one, and Jason glued together the rest of Tilly's armor. Rigel came to help.
August 5 We have one more kobold skull to cut out and all three of them to glue together, plus the rest of the horns.
August 10 All we did was glue stuff together this week. We got all the horns glued together and one kobold skull. t
August 12 We had to buy more glue so we could get the rest of the kobold skulls pieced together. We got a pattern for the Bullywug head, printed it out, cut it out, and then taped it together to see if it was the right size for a human head and to make sure we could see out of it. The actors are def going to have to see out of the mouth opening. Then we decided to use googly eyes instead of painting them on.
August 17 We cut out and glued together the Mindflayer mask and then realized it didn't have a back, so we pieced together a different pattern to use as the back.. William made the first Bullywug mask out of cardboard and put it together with masking tape. That didn't work.
August 19 William got the first Bullywug head hot glued together after realizing that masking tape just wasn't going to work. then got the second one cut out. Jason used hangers to make the frames for both of the succubi wings and got one of them covered in red cellophane. Then he used the moldable foam to sculpt on Orcus' one horn. I used it to fill in cracks on the other horns and especially the kobold masks.
August 24 We got a lot of work done. I filled moldable foam in around the ears for the Bugbears. and used it for sculpting on the Mind Flayer mask. I got two coats of plastidip on the all the foam, William got another Bullywug head finished and the third one cut out. Jason finished the other half of the succubus wing, added a fabric layer to both of them., and finished the moldable foam around Orcus' other horn.
August 26 We got another coat of plastidip on everything and I cut and glued together the second Mindflayer mask.
So, to sum up, in three months Jason, William, and I got all the Kobold, Mindflayer, Bugbear, and Bullywugs masks cut out, glued together, heat sealed, and Plastidipped, as well as the horns for Orcus, Lilith, the Succubi, and Tilly's armor with the exception of her breastplate because we needed that role to be cast first. Jason also did both sets of the Succubi wings.
June 22 We started by pulling anything out of storage that we thought we might possibly use. Armor, gloves, helmets, fur suits, masks, capes, belts, unitards etc.. We spent four hours doing that. That night I ordered EVA foam and supplies to work with it. Later I went back in with my husband and started labeling racks and sorting the pulled items and grouping them into monsters or playable characters. I pulled more things that I hadn't thought of before, like the Globolinks aliens costumes, the Ramayana demon costumes and tree costumes, the Medea masks, the Medea skirts, the Tempest Dryad unitards, We paired up gloves.
June 29 We used the fist hour just to print out all the patterns we'd collected. I bought Punished Props patterns and Jason bought several sets of cosplay patterns by Kamui Cosplay. We spent the next hour sorting, labeling, and putting them in envelopes as well as choosing which patterns we'd use for which character. Then we spent the rest of the night cutting out patterns for two hours. We realized we were going to need more foam so I bought round foam ropes, pool noodles, octopus fingers, and a second pair of painter's stilts. Later in the week I picked up the scissors from Ludwigs where they were sharpened, and brought up my heat gun, some more patterns, and my dremel tool. www.kamuicosplay.com/product-category/patterns/
July 6 We cut out all the patterns and notched them. William and I cut the hats off the of the flying monkey masks and patched them.
July 13 We cut out the kobold skull pattern and sized it up to fit a human head. The upper jaw was too small but the lower jaw was just fine. We blew up the upper jaw pattern pieces 150%
July 20 Traced all the horn patterns onto the foam. We need one pair for Ocus, Lilith, and the two succubus cheerleaders. We also traced out the kobold skull pattern pieces for one Kobold, but we need three.
July 27 cut out the horns and Tilly's armor, William was sick. Jason glued together the greaves for Tilly,
Aug 3 Cut out the rest of the Kobold Skull mask pieces for a second one, and Jason glued together the rest of Tilly's armor. Rigel came to help.
August 5 We have one more kobold skull to cut out and all three of them to glue together, plus the rest of the horns.
August 10 All we did was glue stuff together this week. We got all the horns glued together and one kobold skull. t
August 12 We had to buy more glue so we could get the rest of the kobold skulls pieced together. We got a pattern for the Bullywug head, printed it out, cut it out, and then taped it together to see if it was the right size for a human head and to make sure we could see out of it. The actors are def going to have to see out of the mouth opening. Then we decided to use googly eyes instead of painting them on.
August 17 We cut out and glued together the Mindflayer mask and then realized it didn't have a back, so we pieced together a different pattern to use as the back.. William made the first Bullywug mask out of cardboard and put it together with masking tape. That didn't work.
August 19 William got the first Bullywug head hot glued together after realizing that masking tape just wasn't going to work. then got the second one cut out. Jason used hangers to make the frames for both of the succubi wings and got one of them covered in red cellophane. Then he used the moldable foam to sculpt on Orcus' one horn. I used it to fill in cracks on the other horns and especially the kobold masks.
August 24 We got a lot of work done. I filled moldable foam in around the ears for the Bugbears. and used it for sculpting on the Mind Flayer mask. I got two coats of plastidip on the all the foam, William got another Bullywug head finished and the third one cut out. Jason finished the other half of the succubus wing, added a fabric layer to both of them., and finished the moldable foam around Orcus' other horn.
August 26 We got another coat of plastidip on everything and I cut and glued together the second Mindflayer mask.
So, to sum up, in three months Jason, William, and I got all the Kobold, Mindflayer, Bugbear, and Bullywugs masks cut out, glued together, heat sealed, and Plastidipped, as well as the horns for Orcus, Lilith, the Succubi, and Tilly's armor with the exception of her breastplate because we needed that role to be cast first. Jason also did both sets of the Succubi wings.
Pre-Build Gallery
I was able to buy a lot of supplies with last year's budget money that was leftover after school ended. I got foam, scalpels and blades, Plastidip, Barge cement, spray adhesive, gray Primer, E=6000, hot glue, spray paint, acrylic paint, brushes, sponges, elastic, and curved needles. Even with all that preparation, I still ran out of everything but scalpel blades and hot glue sticks. I ended up buying foam twice more, as well as contact cement, spray adhesive, Plastidip, and spray paint.
Auditions
Auditions were held Monday and Tuesday August 23-24 in the BPAC at 7:30. Cold readings from the scripts.
Cast List
|
|
The Monster build
Now that the students are back everything is happening a lot faster. James used the moldable foam clay to sculpt the second mindflayer mask. Joaquin put together the first pair of Umberhulk mandibles. Brendan, Karina, Joaquin, Kazz, and Taylor used paper mache clay to sculpt over the cardboard bullywug and Umberhulk masks. Racheal, Rael, and Joaquin cut circles out of foam scraps to add texture to the Umberhulks and Kazz cut the second Umberhulk out of cardboard. Alyssa is sewing together the narrator costume that I cut from scraps left over from Spamalot and Midsummer. I spent Labor Day weekend ordering another bunch of supplies and putting together the human costumes.
THe Narrator
We already had the corset and the farthingale from stock. The bodice and skirt was made from fabric left over from Spamalot and Midsummer Night's Dream. The underlayer was blue chiffon, the overskirt was the metallics sewn together in alternating panels. I bought the crown and a white wig from Amazon. We colored in some strands of the white wig with sharpie markers. The elf ears were also left over from Midsummer.
Tillius the Paladin
I bought Tillius' stretchy tights and a long sleeved shirt to go under her armor, as well as long grey boots and white gloves. We had the white cape leftover from Merry Wives. All of her armor was made from EVA foam. We used Kamui Cosplay patterns. Jason Sanchez designed and built all of Tilly's armor pieces. I fit it, Taylor made the buckles and straps. I did the base coat painting and Jason did the detail painting.
Lilith
I used several pieces that I had in stock for Lilith's costume. The black corset went over a purchased pair of black leggings that we cut rips into at the thighs. She wore thigh high boots that I bought from Amazon and a pleather vest that I had in stock. I put a black fur collar on it and gave her bracers from Tristan and Isolde. I attached the horns to a black headband. Originally she was supposed to wear a red wig, but the actress playing Kaliope had already dyed her hair red and I couldn't have two red-heads especially after the white wig didn't fit on the Narrator.
Kaliope
I wanted to use the scale mail that I commissioned for Midsummer on Kaliope but the bracers were too big for her wee hands. I was going to use stock pieces for her costume, but as I went along, I decided that the colors were too muted in the context of the rest of the characters she's on stage with. So I ordered more things from Amazon. In the end, she only wore the leggings for her scene as Kelly, to make Kaliope show more skin.
Orcus: Overlord of the underworld
I used long johns from Henry V for Orcus' under garments. I added a collar and hood from Tristan and Isolde that I cut the hood off and sewed on as shoulder wings to give him more bulk. I made pants out of red faux fur and added the codpiece we made for Henry VIII from A Man for all Seasons to it. I ordered platform boots to make him taller and give him a more cloven hoof appearance. I used a leather breastplate from Royal Hunt of the Sun and repainted it red. He still needed more bulk, so we made pauldrons out of EVA foam. Early on we decided to use ram horns for his character which Jason embellished with foam clay to give them the right layered texture. Because Orcus has a quick change to Ronnie and back, we decided that instead of painting his face red with makeup, a red helmet would be much better and give us a place to attach the horns.
Farrah the Faerie
Because Farrah the Faerie is the student with an STD in Vera's first scene, I wanted their color palettes to match. Wev'e done two plays with faeries--Iolanthe and Midsummer--so there were plenty of things to choose from. I gave the actress the choice of colors and she chose pink. I experimented with various faerie dresses until I found something I liked and then pulled an outfit to match for her first scene.
Evil Gabby and Evil Tina
Because these characters were cast with men, the first thing I had to do was give them the right shape. I bought silicone breasts and black bras. I pulled black spanx, and the opaque tights for drag queens that I bought for Mrs. White in Clue the Musical, for them to wear underneath the rhinestone studded fishnets that I bought on Amazon. I also bought sheer black tops to hide their hairy armpits and Adam's apples. I found this great red vinyl halter dress on Amazon for their cheer costumes but when the boys tried it on, it needed a little something extra underneath since the boys had no hips to fill it out. I pulled the maid petticoats from Clue the Musical and those worked perfectly. The red dresses still needed to look more like cheer uniforms, so I bought goat patches and 666 patches to sew on them. I bought combat boots, black gloves with really long nails attached and these great black and red wigs to complete the look. The nails on the gloves were black, so we used red acrylic paint and glitter glue as nail polish so they'd stand out more. We chose a smaller horn pattern and made those in EVA foam, used hot glue to give them some texture, and then painted them gloss red. We also used red glitter glue on the horns on top of the hot glue. Jason designed and built the wings. He used red cellophane, and spray glued a denser black fabric to the backs and a sheer black metallic mesh fabric on the fronts. We used hot glue to add more dimension to the "bones" of the wings and then used both red and black glitter glue on top to make them stand out more.
Kobolds
I pulled the dryad unitards that Amanda Lassetter dyed for The Tempest as the basis for the kobold costumes with the Caliban skirts worn over them. Leather breastplates from Royal Hunt of the Sun were their armor. The mask pattern for the Kobolds was the most difficult one to work with as it had the most pieces with the most complicated cutting instructions. There was one piece we had to recut two or more times to get it right. We had to size up the top half of the pattern to fit a human head. The lower jaw was surprisingly the right size already. The painting process was very long. After heat sealing, there was two coats of black plastidip, two coats of gray primer, and then two coats of a light beige. Danny Orion did all the detail painting with acrylic paints and then the horns were taped off and sprayed with hammered black metallic paint. I made tails for them out of pool noodles stuffed into opaque pantyhose and sewn onto canvas belts. I bought claw gloves that I intended to glue onto their jazz shoes for feet. They were all painted with the same colors as the masks. The nails were taped off so that they would remain black, but we ran out of time to glue them on.
BUllywugs
The Bullywugs base costume was the green morph suits we bought for Tristan and Isolde last year. I had to cut face holes in them so that the performers could see better, which I hemmed with elastic so they stayed in place. I mixed up a few shades of poly dye to add texture to the unitards. The heads were made of cardboard that we used paper mache clay over to give it more texture and hold it all together. I had leftover googly eyes from the Mad Eye Moody costume we made for Puffs last year that we added after they were painted which added a lot of character. The insides were huge once they were finished and we had to pad them out with pool noodle slices and cotton batting.
bugbears
Fuzzy Friends donated three flying monkey masks to me years ago that I used for the base of the mask. I had to cut off the red pillbox hats and that left a huge hole in the right side of the head. I cut the "band" off of the hat and hot glued the hat crown back inside the mask to close the hole. I patterned huge ears and cut them out of EVA foam and used contact cement to glue them to the masks in front of the monkey ears. Then I used two coats of black plastidip to cover the entire thing, followed by two coats of grey primer, and then did basic detail painting in three shades of brown--light, medium, and dark--spray paint. After the paint dried, I cut collars out of three different colors of fur for the Bugbears chest wig that would stick out from beneath their doublets. I used the scraps to make wigs for the masks. Two of the three performers were fairly skinny, so I bought muscle shirts to pad their torsos out and used football pads on top. I dressed them in costumes that we made for Henry V and used three of the Buffalo robes from Indians for their capes.
Mindflayer
The Mindflayer process began with their masks. We used EVA foam to create the base helmet then used EVA clay foam to sculpt the forehead fins, eye ridges, and tentacle details on the mouth. They were then heat sealed and plastidipped, and then two coats of grey primer. At that point the tubing used for the mouth tentacles was also heat sealed, plastidipped and primed. then glued onto the masks. I bought tentacles finger extensions from Amazon and glued those to black leather gloves. At this stage they were all painted with green acrylic to blend the fingers into the gloves. Then both the masks and gloves were spray painted in gloss green. The black tunics were patterned to close in the front with a wide hem circumference at the bottom and long bell sleeves. Hulahoops were run through the hem to make it stand out away from the stilts that the performers would be wearing. I made whisk collars and matching wide belts out of maroon pleather and used boning to help them stand up better. The tunics were closed in the front with velcro. The belts closed in back with velcro. The feet tentacles were made with pool noodles that were carved at the ends to be sloping and coat hanger wire was inserted into each noodle to allow them to be shaped up and away from the floor. The tentacles were heat sealed and plastidipped. Then, extra noodles were sliced into 1" sections for the suckers and were also heat sealed and plastidipped. Then the suckers were glued onto the tentacles with E6000 and pinned in place till they dried. Lastly they whole thing was spray painted with the same gloss green as the masks and finger tentacles.
Umberhulk
The Umberhulks were a huge undertaking. Jason only wanted to make one and it was my idea to do two. We should have just settled for one. They took so much cardboard. The thigh and greave parts were just cylindrical funnel shaped pieces. The arms had to be built around tomato cages for extra stability and to have something to attach the grabbers to. The back shells were basically 4X8 feet canoes. The fronts were flat pieces that were put together like lorica segmentata armor (lobster tail) and then cut into an arch shape afterwards. I used the same claw gloves that I bought for the Kobold feet but we needed them to have opposable thumbs, so Jason had the idea to cut one finger off and then hot glued both halves shut, then shoved them onto the grabbers. The performers could operate the grabbers inside the costume to make it look like the Umberhulks were opening and closing their hands. All of the cardboard needed to have some round foam pieces glued onto them for texture before being covered with brown fabric. Once that was done, the backpacking frames were zip tied into the back shells, the grabbers were zip tied into the arms, the front piece was zip tied onto the back piece and the heads were zip tied onto the front pieces. Holes were cut in the corners so that the performers could get their arms out and a peephole was cut underneath the "heads" so that they could see out. I used the same pattern as the Bullywug heads to make the Umberhulk heads, we just didn't open the mouths when we covered them with paper mache clay. We then attached the horns to the eye bulges and turned the whole thing upside down which turned the "horns" into Mandibles. I used leftover Mindflayer "suckers" for eyes. All the pieces were painted a coppery green color. I bought the performers platform shoes to make them taller and used a tiny tiki silicone mold with create foam clay toes for the feet, but ran out of time before I could finish painting them and gluing them on.
Bulette
The Bulette was a costume that I was only supposed to provide the legs for originally. However, once school started, the whole thing got passed off to me after the frame was made with pipes and PVC. I covered the frame with pool noodles to make it more comfortable for the performers to carry it. My students put a shell of cardboard all around it which was held together with duct tape, hot glue, zip ties, and a prayer. We then covered the cardboard with blue fabric, and used spray adhesive to stick it down. We cut a peephole for the guy in front to see out of and then spray painted the whole thing in blue, purple, and silver camo pattern. We used cast off Tin Man legs that were donated by Jason Sanchez from his performance at Waco Civic. We didn't have time to make a second pair, so I removed the lower half of the knee and glued it to the bottom of the grieve and ta da-- two matching pairs of Bulette legs. At that point all we had to do was remove all the hot glue "rivets" and match the spray paint job on the shell. Unfortunately, we never got to see this costume on stage because after it was finished it wouldn't fit on stage in between the rest of the scenery. Kelly even did surgery on it during tech week to see if he could cut it down, but that didn't work either, so the whole thing had to be scrapped.
Liches
I had previously bought 6 of these black unitards for the ghosts in A Christmas Carol two years ago. I needed four more for all the Liches. I bought 10 of the vinyl skull heads and ten pairs of skeleton gloves. I used the same red cheesecloth shroud costumes from Christmas Carol and just had to make four more for the Liches. There was supposed to be a Liche King character as well. I had a fanged skull mask already with a bone mohawk that had been damaged and was missing a few bones. I cut all the mohawk pieces off and used them to adorn a metal crown that I made. I added tiny skulls around the band and then painted the whole thing black with white highlights. After I cut the mohawk off, I painted the whole thing black, glued on some hair a la the Cryptkeeper, and then repainted in the more prominent areas white. I also bought a fancier pair of skeleton gloves which I also had to repaint black and then white. He was going to wear a leather breastplate from Royal Hunt of the Sun that I was going to recycle by gluing on foam rib bones on the front and back to resemble a rib cage and then repaint the whole thing. However the actor that was going to play that part, never showed up to rehearsals, so the costume was dropped after the second week of rehearsals.
Gelatinous Cube
The Gelatinous Cube was the one thing I had nothing to do with. It came out great though and was a crowd favorite.
Miles Doppelganger
I bought the pants, belt, bracers, boots, and headband from Amazon. The pants were not nearly the same color as in the photo on the website, so I dyed the pants, and then sewed on a bunch of leather patches and lacing to them. I made the shirt of out stock fabric. I had a welding apron in stock that I'd used for another show that I cut and restitched together as a vest. Then I made a much wider belt out of brown vinyl to cover the lower part of Taylor's abdomen.
Vera The Beholder
I didn't have anything in stock that suited Vera's character and the color palette. I found this dress and wedge sandals on Amazon and they matched perfectly and were exactly the right shade of bloodshot pink that the Beholder was going to be painted. Kelly bought the giant beach ball. It was 10 feet in diameter. My students painted the whole thing white with KILLZ, two coats, and then mixed in some red paint, and filled in the rest of the eyeball with the resulting pink, leaving white space for the sclera, the Sauron pupil, the teeth and some blood shot detailing.
Tiamat
I collected cardboard all summer so that we'd have enough for the five dragon heads, the umberhulks, and the bulette. Kelly made the pattern himself, taped the pieces together and then students used paper mache technique to build up the layers and hold the whole thing together. Kelly then put tap lights in the eye sockets of each drgon and used gels to make the eyes glow the right color. Smoke came out of their mouths too. Each actor that puppeted a dragon head wore a tunic in the matching color over their black unitards and their black balaclavas.
Cheerleaders
I ordered the Cheer uniforms from Omni cheer but the red skirts ended up on backorder, so I had to use some black cheer skirts that we had in stock from a dance piece a few years back. The red skirts finally arrived the last week of October. I bought the chenille letters separately from Etsy and used a red sharpie marker to color the white edges in red so it made the black letters stand out more. I really wanted red letters with a black outline, but couldn't find any.
Steve the Mage
We see Steve first as Steve the Mage when he comes to fight Orcus for the staff. After that Steve changes back and forth from the band geek needing to see Vera to his Mage costume several times so both of them had to be fairly simple to put on and take off in the dark. I got the band jacket and dickie from a Houston seller on Ebay and the band hat from a different seller in Texas. I used stock tux pants and Steve just kept those pants on under his mage costume.
Agnes
Agnes just doesn't have any time to change costumes at all. I really wanted to put her in this Madonna Vogue era bodysuit as the foundation for some D&D fantasy armor at the end for her battle with Taimat, but due to staging issues, we just couldn't make it work.
|
|
