Norwescon 35 - Clash of the Titans Masquerade

Before I get ahead of myself, WE WON PRIZES Y'ALL! Oh wait, I should have waited until the end to say that but I just couldn't help myself! Oh.... and this post, among others is SUPER LATE....

Who: Persesus, Princess Andromeda, and Medusa
When: Pre AND post beheading
Who's: Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans (2010)

We have been working on our Clash of the Titans costumes for MONTHS and it was so lovely to have everything work out so well! Not that we didn't screw up some things and have other things break right before Workmanship Judging, but it was so great to have everything work out after so much hard work! And another thing, to be fair, we were up against some pretty stiff competition!

I've written about Guavious/Perseus's shield here, but I'm going to try an summarize all the high points in this post. We decided shortly after Norwescon 34 (Dune) to do Clash of the Titans for Norwescon 35. We knew that Wrath of the Titans was going to be coming out sometime around April so we thought it would be relevant. We weren't expecting the total backlash of the movie bombing, but it was going up against some really tough competition! We decided on Guavious being Perseus (natch), myself being Princess Andromeda, and Dejathoris to play Medusa. Surprisingly many of our ideas of grandeur that came out of our initial brainstorming phase ACTUALLY TURNED OUT!

Perseus: Perseus is made up of Wunderflex, leather and many, many, MANY rivets. We used some hockey equipment to mold the leather for the shin guards, and old pop cans to mold the wrist guards.

Another major piece to this project was dying all the leather... If you've noticed, for some reason I really like taking pictures of paint drying... I still have no idea why I do this....

Either way, in order for the outfit to read as worn rather than use a flat black we used a Smoke Stain and did between two to three coats on everything. While this was all drying, we worked on the Wunderflex! 

Dejathoris cut out hundreds of those little tabs and and then painstakingly adhered them together with the heat gun. They were then molded on top of the leather and then riveted on. The same process was then completed for the wrist and knee guards.

 The chest piece was one large piece of Wunderflex, with the "muscle definition" pieces being a second layer of Wunderflex being adhered on top of this. All the Wunderflex was spray-painted battered silver, with gun metal coloured paint hand brushed on for definition. The tunic was a nice dark green linen sewn in a matter so that none of the machine sewn edges were showing so that it looked truly authentic to the time.

We also took the liberties of making it a bit longer than the movie version as we didn't want Guavious flashing his goods around in his lovely skirt! Speaking of the skirt, we cut all the tabs differently to, again, add to the detail and 'worn' look we were going for. The only part of the whole outfit that was machine sewn was the skirt tabs to the skirt belt.

The belt was a large enough piece to wrap around Guavious waist, and for extra detail, Dejathoris hand stamped a replica of the symbol from the Clash of the Titans sword we purchased. She also hand stamped a matching scabbard and riveted that together as well.

Princess Andromeda: Logically, and by that, I mean by my logic, this damn costume should have taken a couple of days... However, it did not. We kept finding "better fabric". At the end of the day, we went back to our very first fabric... We tried planning, we really did!

So the main part of this costume, the sheath dress is a piece of fabric we picked up at Bhatia Fabrics in their discount bin.  We then attached the straps using gold cord from the dollar store of all places! And created a little bit of pin tucking to add a more delicate detail on the bottom. Next, we attached this heavy gold and cord belt (left) around the waist.  The final dress detail on the dress was attaching these golden medallions: One where each strap met the dress, two on each sleeve, and one on every pin tucked seam.

The ORIGINAL second piece of fabric was the perfect blush colour to show off our original inspiration Clash of the Titans (1981). Princess Andromeda has a lot more stills from this film and is generally seen in this gorgeous peach/pink dress. We tried bringing the fabric into the 2010 version by spray painting medallions onto the fabric but that turned out AWFUL. So in our last minute rush, I grabbed my wedding sari, and we used that instead. Selfishly? I loved being able to show off my wedding sari again. However, Guavious pointed out how clumsy I am and was extra-special worried I was going to wreck it... Which by my record? It's a miracle I didn't!!

The jewelry was modified from a set purchased at Bhatia. The necklace was turned into a tiara, and the earrings stayed earrings. The necklace I wore was another medallion added to a leather cord.

The makeup, although I have yet to find a good closeup, was where I spent most of my time. I used Nyx and LIT cosmetics and CAKED myself in gold body glitter. I then drew leaves and swirls all around my eyes in different golds, using mostly LIT cosmetics  They had the best selection of golds but also had a great primer which really held on.

Medusa: 

Medusa was created in several parts - the base being a ton of body paint over which a black skirt with an 8 foot tail attached, a leather underbust corset, and a scaled bra piece made with wonderflex was worn. Two snake headdresses were then constructed using wonderflex and dollar store rubber snakes, one having moving snakes which would be worn, and the other was secured to a full scale model of Dejathoris' severed head.

For the "Alive" Medusa we created a scaled bra piece using leather tools to create the snakeskin texture on our Wunderflex, which was then spray painted a flat black. A skirt was created using wide leather strips on the front down to the knees, with an 8 foot, stuffable train attached to the back, with a leather "rattle" on the end, which gave the impression of a giant snake.  The leather corset was worn on top to mimic the look, along with the tiered leather front of the skirt, of the famous Minoan Snake Goddess.  Earlier in the week, we had purchased a bunch of pillows and spent the better half of the afternoon stuffing and hand sewing the tail, which was then pinned up in a curl to allow for mobility.

HOWEVER, once the outfit was complete there was the process of turning Dejathoris' skin into Medusa's scales. We sprayed her from head to toe in a silver hair spray. After drying we then used the most ridiculous technique of rolling on scales that I hope makes sense: Black Elmers non-toxic paint, a lint roller, and a large stamp pad with a snake skin pattern (intended for scrapbooking). The black paint actually looks more navy but I digress. We wrapped the stamp pad over the lint roller and coated it in paint. I then GENTLY rolled the scales onto Dejathoris' legs, arms, neck, and face.  As this dried we sealed it twice with our cosmetics sealant.  White, snake eye contacts were used to complete the look.

Finally, in order for the prop to be effective "Beheaded" Medusa and "Alive" Medusa's heads needed to match as closely possible. So for this, Dejathoris spent part of her December holiday getting her brother to do a life cast of her head. Check out our Flikr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecostumeguild/sets/72157628642107293/
 for a detailed photo log of this involved process.  Using expandable insulation foam from Home Depot over top of a skull prop from a Halloween shop, a base for the severed head was then sculpted so that the moulded face piece could be attached.  She then worked on the headdresses at the same time.  A crown of wonderflex, again given a scaled texture using leather working tools, was then woven with rubber snakes for each one prior to painting.  For the "Alive"  headdress,  remote control motors were included in order to enable the snakes to move a bit.   However - lesson learned! - the batteries had gone dead by the time we got to Seattle, so unfortunatly we were unable to show off this special effect as they had been sealed off with wonderflex and paint.   A new rule was then established: always ensure batteries are accessible when including electronics in your costumes so that they can be replaced as needed.

Overall this was a pretty big undertaking. We made a full suit of armour, two heads that had to match, and someone was wandering around in part of her wedding dress! No pressure! Our presentation was a mini-version of the movie. I came out as  Andromeda, asked Perseus to help me, he then goes off to get Medusa's head and just before I'm sacrificed to the Kraken (I got to scream wicked loud here, it was my shining moment), Perseus runs up and saves me with Medusa's head. As Novices, we were up against some UH-MAZING competitors. We won Workmanship and Best in Class both in the Novice Category. And the judges gave us some really positive feedback. Although we had a really thought our skit, the fight scene of Perseus and Medusa ended up being too focused in one corner and we should have used the whole stage. Something that we definitely put in place in future Masquerades.

The Importance of Finishing! - Leatherwork

You might notice that a lot of my pictures involve close up of edges and ends and what not... It's because I'm trying to show all those edges and ends with and without finishing techniques. They take forever, and some times they're a huge pain, but the end result is very much so worth it! Edit: Apparently writing all our finishing techniques is taking a long time too, so I'm splitting it up into different parts. Below are some of our Leather techniques!

When The Costume Guild headed out to our first con, Norwescon 34 in Seattle, WA, we brought our Dune costumes with the plans to dress up for the Saturday evening party. We decided on Friday night to enter the Costume contest instead. So we spent most of the day hanging out with other panicked costumers and some extremely over confident ones... And we learned about a little category called Workmanship. Workmanship is where they essentially look over your entire costume and look at all your techniques. Whether or not you're interested in entering a costume contest, we realized that a little extra workmanship goes a long long way. So I'm going to try and detail some of the techniques we've started using:



- Finishing your edges: When working on Perseus's Skirt, Dejathoris pointed out how much nicer the skirt edges would look if I took the bevel out and ran it along the edges.... Yes, yes indeed it looked better. But it was a pain in the @$$. So when you're taking on a bigger endeavor, you must take into consideration how to make your project look it's best, even if it takes you an extra 10-20 minutes it could mean the difference in your overall look!

- Sealing your Dyes: If you don't seal your dyes, prepare to get paint ALL OVER YOU. This is also the case with many types of spray paint on plastic but I will get to that in a moment. In leather shops like Tandy, you can get a sealant that's a paint or an aerosol spray. Each has a different kind of purpose and intent. I LOVE the spray for awkward angles and many of our projects like our Masks for NYE2011, but the paint was really good on finishing Perseus' (again). On NYE2011, Dejathoris made custom fit leather masques for herself and newly named Mr Dejathoris. To ensure that the dyes did not transfer to their faces, I believe she used the aerosol finishing spray. When we were painting/dying Perseus' leather, we actually used a stain rather than a dye. A dye would have resulted in too finished of a look, so we opted for a stain (more on that in the Perseus' post though). We then mixed some of the stain with the finish, because the finish alone ate away half our paint, resulting in it looking more "unfinished" rather than "worn". We liked the layered look, however we could have also opted for the aerosol to hold true to the look of the dye. 




- Rivets: "ARGH RIVETS" or a friendly frog sounding "Rivet" are two of the most common expressions around our working areas. Rivets can be really, really tough when they want to be, or easy as pie when you've finally figured it out. The key is figuring out how wide the leather/fabric/Wunderflex really is before guessing. Our most common problem was that we were trying to use rivets that were too big, therefore we'd end up with a half-dozen broken rivets and nothing to show for it! Also, this may sound silly, but make sure you're attaching your rivet in the right direction. Because prying off a rivet or a snap that's in the wrong direction is another massive, massive pain!

What are we currently working on - Spring 2012

So I'm going to make every effort to document all the costuming making process as best I can... But I might forget for a while... And I was thinking about it, sometimes I'm going to want to talk about what we're working on right now rather than what we just finished... I will eventually get to my point...

So on one of my favorite author's sites/blogs they post what they are working on and where their current projects statuses... I thought I would try something similar....

What we're working on:
In progress: Perseus - Clash of the Titans (2010)
Staging: 1) Andromeda & Medusa - Clash of the Titans (2010)
               2)Katniss Everdeen; Effie Trinket - The Hunger Games

So let's say that "In Progress" is going to be the costume we're trying to get done RIGHT NOW, Staging could be anything from buying materials, shopping, making a mess in Dejathoris' house with all our crap stuff.

We, and by we I mean Dejathoris, found some amazing material called Wunderflex... I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right, I'll change it later if I'm told to. It is a heat malleable material that apparently pro and regular costumers use all the time to create everything... So we bought it to create the metal work on Perseus' armor. HOLY FRACKINSTOCK this stuff is super wicked. I'm going to try and see if Dejathoris wants to do her write up on it so I won't over share, but this stuff is good for beginners and GDDMN if it doesn't look pro when you're done! The pictures around here are of us trying to mount the Wunderflex "metal" pieces (post painting and staining) onto the leather backing. These are just pictures of the shin guards that Perseus wears. This is going to be the BEST.ARMOUR.EVER.

So while Dejathoris was workin on that, I was busy working on the "skirt" (I'm trying to find a more masculine name for it, thoughts?)... Now what really, really, really sucks? Finishing all the edges... I cut and measured 18 pieces staggering the lengths and widths in proportion to the images. As much as you think you might want a "rough" finished edge, you actually want to do as much finishing as possible... Dejathoris actually went to our Leathercraft class where they taught finished techniques and picked up a bevel. This little doodad smooths the edges of the leather and actually makes the end product look better... So learnings? Finish your damn edges...  We also decided to create a little bit of a border on each of the pieces. So we took an edging tool and ran it along about a quarter inch or so from the end. Once the pieces are stained we're going to make them "pop" by running over the border with a black sharpie. Another learning was that this leather is only 3.5 weight whereas our leather for the Steampunk Trio (of Evil) was a 4.5. The reason this is of note is because the 3.5 took to a sewing machine leather needle amazingly, while the 4.5 broke about 50 million of them. (No lie, I counted).





And finally, Staging wise, we picked up some really great stuff over the weekend. Sephora has a sale on the Eyelashes that Effie Trinket is wearing the in promotion pictures. They're the laser cutout eyelashes, the pattern is called "Deer and Butterfly". We also picked up a nice big Blond 'Fro wig from the dollar store. While we were at Bhatia Cloth House, we picked up some jewelery for Andromeda because my recent attempts at jewelery were running out of time, and costing way more than they should. (More on that later)... FINALLY, we stopped by a thrift store on our way home and found the perfect Katniss jacket. We're going for the "regular" Katniss look rather than the "Arena" look. That way we can take a few literary liberties.



Alright, I think I emptied my brain of all postable material... Guavious is back in town this weekend, and we're hoping to get some pictures of him trying out what we've finished of Perseus, so maybe we'll have something new sooner than we think! And like I said, I'm going to try and write summaries of all the different costume sets we have so far!


Cheers!

Deer and Butterfly Eyelashes @ Sephora:
http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P294802&categoryId=B70