Rachel 10/18/10

This rendering is of a barrister and a cartographer, who are supposed to be creepy ominous characters. I'm very excited about the freaky eyewear for the cartographer. Whoop whoop for the loupe!

Rachel 10/17/10

At one point in this play, a small boy named Albert and his mother approach the protagonist, Louis de Rougemont, in the streets and are clearly big fans of his memoir (which has been published episodically in a magazine to great acclaim, then released as a book). The boy is super-excited to meet him and asks Louis to sign his toy boat. Later when Louis' reputation is in question, Albert denounces him as a fraud.

The players portraying both roles have to quickly become the characters and just as quickly assume other roles, hence the pieces creating them being limited to a hats and a sailor-like neckerchief.

Pencil, ink pen, marker, Photoshop.

Rachel 10/16/10

There's a whole crew of a ship in Shipwrecked! (which should come as a surprise to exactly no one), and here's a rendering showing the captain, Jensen, and one of the sailors. For these, i have a couple of research pictures to share, because i think they're particularly useful to look at in context.

First, Captain Jensen: in talks with the director, he had a very strong image of Captain Jensen as being like Captain Haddock from Tintin. The cap and the peacoat and a turtleneck sweater are taken straight from that character's iconic look.

With the sailor, he's meant to be one example of what the crew will look like, which will be composed of two players and three Foley artists (who are normally off to the side making the sound effects in view of the audience but not onstage, but in this scene will join the players for a large crowd effect). In thinking about how to dress the collective five Sailors then, i'm going to be choosing pieces that evoke this research image:

Rachel 10/15/10

There will actually be three Prospectors, but they didn't all fit on the size paper i had. Presume that the third will fit with these two as a sensible set of people. At this point, I'm really into this rendering process on this show, loving the opportunity to draw the same performers over and over in different characters! Can you track who's playing what? (Obviously the dark-skinned female actor is easy to track, being the only black woman and only person with dreadlocks.)

Same as the rest, pencil/pen/marker/Photoshop.

Rachel 10/14/10

This rendering illustrates how Players in a stock base costume (trousers and shirt) might add pieces (hats, coats and stoles) to briefly "become" society women and upper-crust pedestrians in London.

This is one of a series i'm doing just to show the looks for various add-ons, but no one's draping from these renderings.

Same as the rest in this series: pencil, ink pen, marker, and Photoshop.

Rachel 10/13/10

At the end of the play in Shipwrecked!, a group of scientists and academics surround the main character and bully him about his story, saying they can prove he's lying. So, they're going to be some scary intimidating academics, and they're going to wear those creepy clear masks that are vacuformed into face-shapes, but which really distort your features. I think people mostly rob banks in them.

So, this rendering is meant to represent that collective of academics and scientists, what their add-on pieces might look like (robe, mortarboard or tam). THese will be pulled, rented, or purchased costumes so no one is draping or patterning from this sketch.

Rachel 10/10/10

It's Queen Victoria! There is a prelim for this which, paging back through the blog, i see i didn't share back when i drew it. Maybe i'll post it later for comparison.

I did share the quick sketch i did of Shrek's Lord Farquaad, a fairly well-known short-statured character played on the actor's knees. Queen Victoria is another one of those. In Shipwrecked!, part of the play's structure calls for all roles to be played by the same three actors, so the production team has to find a way to have a male actor play this role believably, comically, or both. Knee-walking to evoke Victoria's short stature is the way we're going. She'll be played by a male actor who stands over 6' tall, so he'll have kneepads on and become little short roundy old Victoria.

Another challenge with this costume is, it's a super fast quick change, so the whole transformation has to happen super-speedily. The wig/veil/crown will be constructed-in-one as a headdress, and the body padding/bustle structure/gown will also be all connected together as well (though separable for cleaning purposes). I'll probably be writing up the production process on this garment over in La Bricoleuse once we begin construction, because it's going to be so intricate and interesting.

Rachel 10/8/10

Yet more of Shipwrecked!

At one point, the protagonist, his dog, and the aborigine family who adopt them are set upon by rival tribespeople in war masks. This rendering shows those mask designs. We've already begun making them, and they are 3' tall!

I love this rendering because of the active poses, which are taken from photographs of actual aborigine warriors in regalia.

Pencil, pen, marker, and Photoshoppage.

Rachel 10/7/10

This is Louis de Rougemont's second look, which i shared last month in preliminary format. Again, i had a cast list when i drew this one so the rendering has become more "realistic looking" without really any change in the design of the costume itself. Pencil, ink pen, marker, Photoshop.

Rachel 10/6/10

Here's the final rendering for the character of Louis de Rougemont at the top of the show. Our cast list came out yesterday morning, and i did his rendering yesterday evening, so i was able to take into account the fact that the role will be played by Scott Ripley, and try to make the sketch resemble what he will look like in the costume.

It's cool to contrast this final sketch with the sketch i did for prelims on this show, posted back in early September. It's still the same basic costume idea, but i feel like the final really communicates the costume a lot more clearly.

Like yesterday's sketch, this was done with pencil, ink pen, markers, and Photoshopping.

Rachel 10/5/10

So my show at work is going into preliminary production, which means i can share some final renderings. This one is of two characters who are aborigines who wash ashore on a deserted island, inhabited only by a man and his dog. I shared the prelims back in September, but now i've moved on to doing final renderings so it'll be cool to look back and contrast the difference.

In this show, there are a couple of Players who do multiple roles, so this rendering shows two of them in their base costumes, after adding wrap garments in custom created batik fabric to adopt the roles of Gunda and Yamba. Yamba carries a doll which represents her brother, Bobo.

This sketch was done with a combination of pencil, ink pen, marker, and Photoshop.

I've begun to blog about the technical process of the batik design in my costume craftwork blog, La Bricoleuse, which you can read more about here, in a post chronicling the design process of the pattern.

Rachel 9/12/10

Another prelim for Shipwrecked, this one is for Bruno the Dog. One of the challenges of this play for the actors is, they play a huge range of characters so the more theatrical the character, the more dependent its realization is upon the performance. Though we could build an incredible dog suit or mask or whatever, that's not in the nature of the play, and it's not something that there's time to don or doff even in a quick change.

So, in this rough sketch you can see that Bruno is largely going to exist in the actor's performance, with his physicality only suggested by a bag-hat reminiscent of little pup ears and possible a tail rig (though that's on the table for being cut, since this performer has to drop in and out of Bruno and do other characters interspersed.

Rachel 9/9/10

This is the second preliminary rough for the character of Rougemont in Shipwrecked! At the end of the play, he strips down to his bathing suit and rides a giant turtle. This costume has to be able to underdress his prior costume, and is meant to be pretty much an exact copy of this period photograph of a bathing costume.

Rachel 9/4/10

This is the first in a group of prelims i'll share here, for an upcoming production at my theatre, Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. I drew them a while back, but didn't want to share them in this blog until i had some feedback from my director and had shared them with my Costume Director and shop manager. But, now everyone's seen them, and they aren't the actual final renderings either, so i feel okay about sharing them in here.

This is the character Louis de Rougemont, the narrator and star of the play. The play is him telling the story of his life, acting it out with the help of some Players. It's an incredible tall-tale about how he left home as a boy, survived a shipwreck on a deserted island, was discovered by some tribespeople, fell in love and married a woman from the tribe, etc etc etc. The story spans the time from 1860-1900, and the Player company all start the show as modern-day at the top, assuming period characters onstage. Rougemont though is clearly a dude from 1898, as you see here.

The play is based on a real guy (this photo here is the actual de Rougemont), who told his amazing story in a serial publication to the delight of Victorian England, and subsequently was disgraced as the Royal Academy denounced him as a liar and fraud, much like the many literary frauds who have come to light in the past few years (James Frey, JT Leroy, Nasdijj, Margaret B. Jones, etc).

This sketch pretty much is piece for piece the real de Rougemont, down to the three piece suit and fancy moustache. I did a series of background prints in Photoshop for these sketches (which are, again, prelims, not the actual renderings at all) using map elements, since one thing this blog has done for me is revealed how much i love creating sketches on an interesting background field.

I did the sketch first in a very light 2H pencil, then went back into it with a range of colored ballpoint pens, being inspired by the engraved political cartoons and book illustrations of the period. I may continue with this method for the "real deals," or i might get some actual nib-point pens and colored inks for the real ones. Haven't decided yet.

Regardless, here's Louis, and the ball that is Shipwrecked is in play!