Elsa sequins

Elsa sequins

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Well here’s an interesting thing. I used a cutter to just test how my various materials look as cut properly.

Turquoise upper left, Blue Iris upper right, cornflower blue lower left.

Under natural lights the turquoise is darkly mirrored, it’s not as pale as it appears even without flash. Looks the closet to the side view

The cornflower blue does wind up very pink/purple when cut into small shapes. The iris looks best in all the photos. However it is quite distinctly pale in person.

 

So I tested how the three looked scattered together. On the upper right, to the lower left is the standard cornflower blue.

 

 

I think I actually like this. Compared to how vibrantly pink the cornflower is alone this gets all the tints and hues of the ice Elsa creates.

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Elsa, plans being tested and they work :)

Elsa, plans being tested and they work 🙂

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Just a super short test using a test pattern.

That is the Shimmer Sheetz cut in to 10mm squares. The test cutting patterns also do rounded rectangles 🙂 The smaller the shapes the more glassy they look 🙂 So I’ll see if I can test the three materials tomorrow 🙂 And yep as that small they are hard to scratch 🙂

 

Also thanks to Chikkijet of cosplay.com I have a Disney store Elsa. And she is just sitting her reminding me. Judging me.

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Elsa screencaps and musings :)

Elsa screencaps and musings 🙂

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Sparkle of doom! This is so like a big torchlight solo, oh hey given the music was written by B’Way peeps this may be part of the rationale behind her Diva gown? I think of it as her Broadway Diva gown because really  Frozen follows the beats of a musical so very well.

 

Clear view of the pointy train on the gown!

 

Even in very yellow light her cape and skirt are vastly different. And there is a box pleat right at the CB seam (also seen above.) It’s short but it is there. Might give that little wiggle room for hips?

Umm hello waist seam? Yes, yes that is a waist seam clearly showing the rectangular sequins are a separate layer to the under gown. It’s a full on gown with floating ice crystals as a bodice overlay.

So I am very glad I bought cotton tulle as I will be able to tint it for the cape and also use it help make this sheer sequinned overlayer. I know this may be an artifact of the whole CGI process but in other scenes you can clearly see the bodice move in sync and out of sync with the skirt.

 

Makeup! Okay so it’s more obvious on the big screen but this is easily achieved with red interference on a cool purple. The mixing of warm and cool tones will help muddy the tone a little. I still need some interference red to try this but I have noticed with my other interference pigments this does happen.

 

Oh look, Elsa has a tie at the end of her braid. Yes. There is a snowflake on it (which is technically the underside.)

Okay there is definitely shaping to the hem. It’s a bit hard to tell but the hem is far from a smooth line. Not sure how much is from having shaped panels- easier to show in some paper or interfacing so I will be doing some tests.

A nice clear shot of the snowflakes.

Is it wrong I see the Imperial Cog in the largest of her snowflakes? Can’t unsee it! But look at that wide opaque border of the hem.

Another look at the tones!!! And a reference for the length of the train.

Check out the notches on the hem! Very clear deep points that follow the large snowflakes but also within each motif.

Another pointy train reference, and again the very strong difference between skirt and cape colour, her bodice overlay sort of merges the two.

Clear view of the very high back- it even scoops up. Also nice clear line marking the top of the cape- like a row of bugles, or three rows of bugles. But it doesn’t appear at the front.

A reasonable shot showing how high the bust cups go.  Also sweetly goofy expression caught.

A clear view of the shape of the cape- remember how the art book says her cape defies gravity? Well here it doesn’t so she is clearly too distracted and hurting to focus. Ditto with her braid falling straight back. But you can also see how very shaped the train is to puddle like that.

 

The following sort of show how the bodice acts like a thin overlayer. Not how it collapses under the bust:

And then here is very smooth and sort of pulls up with her standing straighter. Also here you can see some of the tonal shading in the bodice- the bust is cooler and paler than towards the waist.

Here the waist looks like a regular pointed waist but you can see how it acts like a second overlay but how the lower edge of the bodice is incredibly thin, like it’s just the ice jewels.

  

And finally a snarly Elsa with lots of lovely tone on tone details on the bodice. You can clearly see the dimension of the clear/silver ice jewels are different to the flat rectangles. Also you can see how textured the ice flurry on her cape is. There are at least three layers to the cape: net/ground, opaque patterns, and finally clear textured ice particles. The ice particles are denser at the top and the opaque patterns are the same all over.

I need to check my caps for a really good clear view of the seams of the skirt because there are several seams. Like 7 panels I think.

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Cotton tulle! Get it while it's there!

I finally have a cape fabric for Elsa that I can easily dye with predictable results! I can’t believe it is available so randomly… Geoff’s Emporium on Lincoln Rd, Henderson has two rolls of about 30m each of off white cotton tulle.

I may have grabbed what I could of the white. There is a little colour variation as I think it was from their older pre-fire stock. But it’s $NZ8/m and about 140cm wide (about 40″ to a metre, about 55″ wide). So if you want some 6m is more than enough for a very generous cape 🙂

They also have a a magnificent wool gabardine. Or satin. I want to say satin but there is just enough definition of the Z wale. But it’s more like a heavy cotton satin with that clear direction of the face. And it’s black. It is magnificent and glorious and I want to make a proper suit out of it and I will as soon as I decide between c1600 Cologne or c1500 Nuernberg. It will both drape beautifully for 1500s and pink well for 1600s. I think Nuernberg as it will be comfortable and I can line it in my maroon silk and be not quite historically accurate Maleficent 😉

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Cotton tulle! Get it while it’s there!

I finally have a cape fabric for Elsa that I can easily dye with predictable results! I can’t believe it is available so randomly… Geoff’s Emporium on Lincoln Rd, Henderson has two rolls of about 30m each of off white cotton tulle.

I may have grabbed what I could of the white. There is a little colour variation as I think it was from their older pre-fire stock. But it’s $NZ8/m and about 140cm wide (about 40″ to a metre, about 55″ wide). So if you want some 6m is more than enough for a very generous cape 🙂

They also have a a magnificent wool gabardine. Or satin. I want to say satin but there is just enough definition of the Z wale. But it’s more like a heavy cotton satin with that clear direction of the face. And it’s black. It is magnificent and glorious and I want to make a proper suit out of it and I will as soon as I decide between c1600 Cologne or c1500 Nuernberg. It will both drape beautifully for 1500s and pink well for 1600s. I think Nuernberg as it will be comfortable and I can line it in my maroon silk and be not quite historically accurate Maleficent 😉

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My @JosyRose_Tweet sequin film arrived :)

The colour is gorgeous! Super pale! Super pale, I was worried it would be quite dark but it’s only just warmer than my Shimmer Sheetz, not darker. To the recharged camera!

DSC_0227 sm_DSC_0213

sm_DSC_0212  sm_DSC_0215 sm_DSC_0216

It’s a very similar thickness and the film is still a bit fragile however when you see the state the post bag it was in by the time it got to me it’s not that surprising. I have two rolls and I think that is over kill.

I played with looking at the film in different directions and yes, you can control just how much pink or blue you get by using the film vertically one way or the other.

Really surprised by how pale this is. It’s great! Very tempted to get samples from all over the place to compare them to. But this is about as close to the colour of her dress at the end of Let it Go when she is in bright brilliant light that makes her dress look like pale mid tone blue.

I also found my basic slap some clay on a wire frame video for Maleficent. It’s taking 200 odd mintues for 7 minutes of video, but if I knock back the quality it winds up being very low quality by the time youtube has finished processing.

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Aiee!!

Given how badly everything is going right now in terms of costuming I think it may be a case of being too tired to actually do all this stuff. So I think I’m going to start printing and drawing and will actually sculpt the horns because yes. It is all total pants right now.

If anyone wants a set of horns please let me know as I will have enough resin and powder to make a few sets and make the mold worthwhile.

The other option is to make the putty like I have by accident before and use it as clay because it’s so light you can bounce it. Much antihistamines and careful mixing…hmmm very tempting.

Soooo clay and mold and cast or mix resin and filler and direct model. Either way tonight I get dimensions for horn shapes.

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Another sequin source :)

Sadly they don’t have an opaque aqua or subtle turquoise but look:

http://www.josyrose.com/sc-sequin_film-1307.aspx

I hadn’t really understood the site the first time I visited so only saw the sequin waste but they do indeed have narrow sequin strips (83X5000mm) which are just wide enough to go through stamping and cutting machines and to be hand cut and have the backs sanded for grit etc.

So I have the pale blue on the way and I’m going to attempt to overdye the stuff. I have had sequins and pearls dye before, but I am not sure if the coating played a part. I think if I can just get a green tint to the laminated clear layer then I will be happy.

I’m also going to see if I can punch tiny tiny holes for sewing (my main issue with all the sequins I have found- rounded or square- has been the size of the holes) I will go ahead and sew the thing. But my concern is finding a punch that tiny that doesn’t tear.

This is where woven and non woven materials differ! In woven materials you want to push aside the fibres so when sewing or putting in eyelets you want to cut as few threads as possible. For me this means setting eyelets in corsets is a nightmare but they stay put forever and never wear out.

For plastic and latex etc you want a clear sharp cut through all layers and with no snags. A tear will tear forever so a cut needs to have a nice fully round hole punch out of the end.

I found this to be really true for my Shaak Ti tooth headdress. I used a heavy needle on my grunty sewing machine to carefully push a hole through for each tooth. But it has caused stress cracks that caused at least one or two to be lost during the process.

So I’m just waiting for the plastic to arrive before overdying anything else 🙂

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A few Elsa costume quotes,

So, the frozen art book has a lot of cool stuff. Of note is the tense- everything is written as if it was pre-production. So I’ll add in my conclusions below.

Giaimo put Elsa in a triangular aqua cape decorated with snowflake patterns.

I think this describes the art work which is indeed aqua. The final result is definitely not aqua-except as an overlay of light in some scenes.

“Elsa’s palette suggesta a beautiful ice crystal,” he explains. “She is a walking effect in the way those colours reflect and refract.”

Yay! Also if you look at the artwork everything that is ice is coloured- usually in the blue shades but even to pink shades. And yellow, even if Olaf thinks it’s a bad colour for snow 😉 Interesting that the yellow is most pronounced when Elsa is attacked.

“I’m attracted to colour schemes that have close analagous relationships. It creates a striking effect.”

With her subtle mauve crew-neck top, paired with her icy blue cape and warm blue dress, Elsa’s colour palette is exquisitely harmonious.”

There is a lot of info here. Colourwise this confirms her sleeves are mauve (they tint to aqua at the wrist- it’s incredibly marked in some promo artwork and washed out in others. This is why promo-artwork can be a bit of a mixed bag- the models are rendered and then there is further editing to alter colour, proportions, add more hair etc. Like you expect in image processing for real people as well.
But the colours of the cape and the dress are reversed in the final model for the film. When you look at the artwork this is indeed the colour scheme even if it is hard to see the dress underneath! (and as per the new link below from Brittney Lee, the colours are reversed for her final design).
Also interesting to see how the sleeved undershirt is defined as having a crew neck. A crew neck is supposed to fit to the neck, Elsa has a dropped shoulder/nearly off the shoulder neckline.
 

For Elsa’s cape, they want to have a crisp, almost unrealistic triangle shape to it. Gravity would probbaly dip the cape down, but they want to pull that off and not have it feel distracting.
-Wayne Unten, supervising animator

Which explains some of the rigid animation is scenes inside her palace of ice vs how it is almost in free fall towards the end of the film.
 

Early on, Mike put Elsa, once she is the snow queen, in this stunning lace cape made out of ice. That cape set the bar very high for a design sensibility, particularly for Elsa’s world, that was very beautiful but also very modern.
John Lasseter in the Preface

We have normal ice.. there there’s Elsa’s magical ice. There are two different sets of shapes and colours. Deep ice has really strong blues as opposed to thin ice, which is greys and whites.
-Cory loftis, visual development artist.

So we have Elsa’s gown and cape as deep ice and the decorations as light ice. I think we kind of know this if we’ve had a chance to see icebergs or glaciers in person or in good photos  Just nice to know this is probably part of the inspiration and thought process 

We also came up with the idea of Elsa having a signature snowflake shape. If you saw it anywhere in the movie, you’d know it wasn’t nature, it was her.
-Dan Lund, effects artist

Michael Giaimo used the word panache to describe the design sense on Frozen, and that’s Elsa to a T, stylish original, and confident. From the column dress with leg slit and train, to the ethereal frost cape that needed to be magical yet believable, to her gorgeous almost flame licked hair.
-Keith Wilson, sim lead.

Many of our samples came from the Disney Parks costume division in Fullerton, California, where we got further education and recommendations. This collaboration translated directly to the walk-around costume interpretations for Disney’s Theme Parks, when that time came. It really helps when a studio has those kind of extensive resources!”

Costume Design in Animation – Disney’s Frozen – Tyranny of Style

So yes, yes it is possible to look at the park costume and use some of their samples for ideas 

(reposting from my rpf thread 🙂 ) And adding in some quotes from Brittney Lee..

Ahah!

http://britsketch.blogspot.co.nz/2014/02/frozen-costume-design.html

I thought so! Anna does grow up between the incident and the very start of Snowman. Also Elsa has a totally different growth rate, which may also make it harder to tell the age gap between the two.

http://britsketch.blogspot.co.nz/2014/02/frozen-elsa.html

When you have fancied yourself as a bubbly mermaid for most of your life, the realization that you are actually more of a snow queen kind of hits you like a ton of ice-bricks.

This quote is more for me as I too wanted to be Ariel when I was younger 😉 I drew mermaids everywhere.  Also hey, original source!

One of the first assignments I received on Elsa was a redesign of her hair. She had initially been designed with a sharper silhouette, but as her character changed it became apparent that her style needed to be refreshed. …. Oh, and magical – it would be great if it was magical, too.

Elsa doesn’t have time to fuss with her hair – she just freezes it in place and gets on with the show.

And then there is that dress. What I wouldn’t give for someone to ice-magic me that dress. Just like Elsa herself, her dress went through many, many iterations until it finally felt right for our girl. When this dress materializes, Elsa is at her most confident. She is open and free after years of controlling and containing all of her emotions. Since costumes should be designed to support the character, this dress needed to be a glorious breathe of relief.

 

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Anyone indertest in 24kg of PET?

Just worked out what a “roll” of sequin material actually is.. it’s not quite as advertised! Not going by photos.. in otherwords do you know how ridiculously overengineered my Elsa gown will wind up being?

I am even looking at making my own sheeting from urethane. Yeah.. it’s a bit softer than I expected but it possibly could be screen printed… coo.. omg! yes, yes it could! But it would be flexible however my mind went immediately to Dame Vaako… that mesh is definitely screen printed in some way because you can see how the texture pattern has slid a bit…. Which you see a lot in screen printing.

Meanwhile I am also scoffing all the B12 and all the iron as yes. RA is to blame for the fatigue, again. And no we are not having injections as they didn’t actually raise my stores much last time. And I now have deep pits in my hips from them.

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