The Finished Costume

Finally the costumes are finished. I had the fittings and altered the last few things and they are both done. 
The only major ateration was the mask of the owl didnt fit very well on the dancers face however I have decided for the show, when I get the costumes back from assesment that I will reattach the mask on to the headress this will enable the dancer to look underneath the mask rather than through it which originally caused problems.


Here are pictures of the costumes after the fittings they fit both girls really well and I am very pleased.  

                                                                               Dodo

                                                                              Owl

The owl jacket.

Because the unitard is borrowed I cannot mark it in anyway or attach anything to it which might make it unusable for anything else. Therefore I came up with the idea to make a jacket which goes over the top of the unitard which is light and easy to move in. I found some fabric which is white and covered in hair like threads, i think it is supposed to be made for cushions but I thought it would have great movement and look good combined with the feathers.

This is the jacket made and not decorated with the feathers.

I used a 1/2 metre to make the jacket and cut it on the stand making a calico toile first. However due to not being able to see the dancer I had to do a lot of guess work and leave lots of room. I left the back open to give extra room and left a large seam allowance and it fit well when i had the fitting so my guess work was done well.

These two images are the jacket fully decorated, there is a lot of texture and feathers as i wanted to create the illusion of grandness and bulk to the shoulders. 

I am really please with the final result and I think it represents my design well. However it was very difficult attaching all the feathers and I would have liked to have used the glue gun less and sewn more on, however due to the time constraints it was unfortunately the was they had to be attached.

Budget.

Dodo:

£10.40 - Feathers
            - Natural browns
            - Marabou/golden olive.
£6.50   - Cotton lycra.

£1.50   - Plastic mask.

£5.50   - Clay (to make the beaks)

In TOTAL: £23.90



Stuff I already had:

• Wadding for chest pad
• Fabric for homemade feathers
• Straws for feathers
• Glue gun & glue
• fabric inks to paint the unitard
• threads.
• Acrylic paint for the beaks
• Brown Dye to dye the cotton lycra, which was used to make the chest pad, hood & gloves.

The Workshop suplied the Latex, whichw as used on the beaks.

The unitards were provided by the dance school.

Owl:

£3.98  - Natural Browns

£2.50  - Marabou/ white

£ 6.50 - Cotton Lycra 

£2.50  - White shaggy fabric 1/2 metre, uses for the owl's jacket.

£1.50  - Plastic mask 

£1.25  - Flymo

£1.25  - Felt pirate hat used for to make a base for the owl head dress.

£2.50  - White feather boa.


In TOTAL: £20.73

Stuff I had already:

• Wadding for the head dress.
• fabric for the feathers
• Poppers   

I think I have done really well with the budget of these two costumes, however it has only been reasonably cheap because I had most of the materials already. However i think the purchases I have made were all good value for money and used effectively.


The ballet school will be very pleased with the result, as all of the money goes to charity, and it was important that I kept the cost down as much as possible.

Owl Headress

I have started making the owls head dress. I found a hard felt hat at a fancy dress shop for £1.50 and used it as a base of the head dress, I then used wadding to build up the head dress to the shape I wanted.
These pictures, are the original prototype of the head dress which i made, as funny it was to put on, it helped me make a pattern for the balaclava/hood which would fit over the headress and neck and be tucked underneath the unitard at the neck. I found it difficult to make a pattern for the balaclava with out making a trial one before because of the odd shape of the head dress.


Once i finally made the real hood,I attached feathers and home made feathers on to the head dress using a glue gun and stitching some on.     

The picture below is the owl head finished with the feathers attached. I am a little concerned as the dancer which will be wearing this costume is quite small. I am hoping that the head dress dosent swamp her. I am also a little worried that the mask will not fit, although if I find when I have a fitting that it doesnt fit I will attach the mask on to the top of the head dress so that the dancer looks underneath the mask rather than through it.  

 

This is the mask and headress together. 

Owl

For the owl I decided I wanted the costume to reflect the owls major feature, the head shape. For this project it is very important the the costumes do not restrict the dancers movement, so I decided that the head  dress would be the best option to make the key feature.

To begin I looked at the owls head and how I would translate the shape into my design. I decided to make a padded head dress out of foam or wadding, because of the light weight nature of the two materials.  I think this way it would give the right shape without compromising the comfort of the dancer. 

The design I have come up with is a rough idea but I am still thinking of ways to practically make it.  As the design suggests the headdress would sit of the top of the head but there would be room on the outside? which wouldn't work as it would flap around and not be stable. Therefore the practicalities still have to be revised.


For the rest of the costume I will have have to also slightly alter the design as i have found that I am not allowed to make any lasting additions to the unitard, as they need to be used again for other performances. This means that I will have to make a top which is worn over the unitard, which can be decorated.
 

Final Evaluation

Evaluation

This project was the ideal thing for me to do at this time in the course. Following the Candide project and my work placement in London I really felt I needed to concentrate on being creative and be able to following my own ideas. This was exactly what this project enabled me to do.
Working with the Murilova ballet school was fantastic, as they were very open to ideas, although the director Sandra, was very sure of her ideas and what she wanted, this gave me boundaries and ideas to work from. For example because it is a ballet production it is very important that the costumes are easy to move in and do not restrict the girls from dancing. This was very quite easy to work around on the costume as the unitards were given to me. So to express the character of the owl, I made a bolero style jacket, which was decorated with feathers. The jacket is not restrictive because it is loose. I am very pleased with the outcome of the owl costume, especially the choice of fabric as it has a great way of moving and rippling when the owl is dancing. If the production was not for a ballet and if I had a bigger budget I would have embellished more of the unitard, and put feathers on the legs and made more elaborate gloves, However that was not suitable for this project.
For the dodo costume I was allowed to elaborate and work into the unitard in more detail, I felt because of the dodos character and its small wings that it was important not to put real feathers onto the arms, so it would not add excess bulk therefore it was important for me to work into the unitard with paint rather than 3d feathers. 
For the beak of the dodo it was difficult to get the right look and make it easily recognizable as a dodo. I made a couple of clay beaks to get one, which I felt was the right shape. There are pictures of the dodo and recreations, which I used as inspiration, but as an extinct animal I found it difficult to look at the beak and instantly think ‘That is a dodo beak’. So I think it is important that I had the opportunity to take my time at the creative stages and make the beaks over and over again. 
I found being able to use the workshop liberating! So far in the course, we haven’t really had the opportunity to use different materials and use all of the fantastic resources open to us in the workshop. However I didn’t get to experiment as much as I would have liked, due to budget and some time restrictions. Nevertheless this project has given me an insight to the workshop and given me some ideas. 
For the masks I found it very difficult it to decide what to make the masks out of, and make them fit properly, because I didn’t have the opportunity to see the dancers until very late in the schedule. So I managed to find some masks, which were suitable and I cut the latex beaks and managed to successfully glue them on. It was a shame I couldn’t have experimented and found an alternative to buying and made some. Although using the ready-made masks brought the cost of the whole costume down. 
Although this project wasn’t a massive budget production, I feel it was the right one for me to do, as this was a community project and close to my heart. It was a great experience being able to help a charity and a group of talented  people with my skills and inspire people with my costumes. 
I fell that It is a great skill being able to produce costumes on a very low budget and being able to be creative and resourceful. As a modern person in the current climate I think it is very important to be resourceful without compromising the general aesthetic of the costume. It should be a skill practiced more, as recycling and reusing things should be a bigger apart of our culture and apart of the costume industry.  I found It very rewarding to explain to the director and the girls of the dance school about the recycled fabrics and how little the costumes cost me because of my resourcefulness, as I hope they will follow my example and realize that great things can be made from unexpected and recycled things.  

Reflecting - Masks, headress, jacket & fitting.

Using latex

I started making the latex beaks first, which I found a really interesting process, I learnt how to use latex properly and how to incorporate colour into the mix, and how much latex to paint ratio I should use. The process was very effective and I will defiantly use the process again in the future as it was so accurate and easy to manipulate. However I will remember that latex perishes and if in the future I need to make masks which need to last longer I will consider using a different material such as vavaform. 

Attaching the beaks to the masks

The next step was attaching the beaks to the masks. If i had more time, budget and fitting time I would have taken a mould of the girls faces to make a properly fitting masks which fit perfectly. However I sourced some plastic masks, and used a glue gun to to attach the beaks to them. It worked really well and is sturdy however it would have been nice to make it from scratch, although using the bought masks made the masks as a whole more cost effective. Furthermore using these masks and not making it from scratch is helping me be more creative and think out side the box. 

Owl head dress

Owl head dress, with the owl costume rather than a lycra hood covered in feathers I made a padded head dress to represent the shape of an owls head which is very rounded. Originally I was going to make them out of foam, but I found a round stiffened felt hat, which I ended up using as a base. I bulit up onto the hat with wadding and covered it with cotton. To match the Dodo costume I made a hood which fitted over the padded hat, it concealed the padded hat and created the shape of the own head perfectly.

After the fitting I found that the owl mask didnt fit the dancer very well with the headress on as well. So therefore I decided to attach the mask to the headress so the dancer looks underneath the mask and not through it.

If I was to make the headress again I would like to use more materials and maybe mould a headress using foam. However I was relunctant to do anything to elaborate and heavy as the dancers are young and I didnt want to make anything that would be to heavy on their heads and make them uncomfortable.    

Owl Bolero.

For the owl costume I was not allowed to paint on to the unitard as it needed to be used again for something else. Therefore I designed a bolero style jacket, which could be worked on so that i could still decorate it the way I originally designed but not harm the unitard. I decided to make it out of a shaggy fabric to add texture and movement, and then I attached home made feathers on to to create more movement. because the stiched and glue could be felt from the inside of the jacket I decided to line it around the front inside so the dancer would not get scratched. It is fastended at the back with poppers to keep it secure and for easy removal. 

Fittings

A difficult thing with this project was trying to get the time and fittings with the dancers, so it wasnt until I had made the costumes and masks that I could get to see if it all fit. This was difficult but possibly a taster to the professional world. I made a lot of changes and allowances to the costumes such as large seam allowances and extra room in the hoods etc to make sure that they all fit.