Of Thesises (Thesi?) and Minions!

Been working all week on a friends art college/thesis/web show thingamithing.
I've mentioned Blush Corp a few times in these posts but now that I've actually started working on it, its time to start talking about it!
(which also trumpets the first time we're going to be talking about current costume work in this stupid thing). Sweetness!

So, Blush Corp was created by my friend Cassi and a couple of her minions (read: Friends) while they were hanging down in Portland. Essentially, from what I understand, they all dressed up as kooky, dorky villains and ran around disrupting typical Portlandian life. If such a thing is possible.

Quickly the whole thing evolved in a rather brilliant little story about a group of villains who band together for the sake of greater good. Led by Lady Blush, her three minions, Subtlety, Retna Burn and Corporal Cunudrum act as essentially "Anti-villains"; people working for the forces of good, through the forces of evil. (if that makes any sense).

Basically, they're anti-villains. They do (conceptually) good things, in really dirty ways. For example: Those kids not eating their veggies? Take their favorite junk foods, bring them to life, make them giant and let them ravage major cities. Kids will realize that only the veggies are safe!

Cassi is putting together a short series of interactive sketches for her thesis project and has brought me in as a minion. So yesterday we ran around like mad chickens to value village and acquired all we needed for the adjustments to the costumes. Although the Blush Corp costumes have already been established, Cassi wanted to re-design some of the costumes before the show.

Today Tobi and I (mostly Tobi) worked on the new Subtlety costume! Which is really adorable, and I'm loving how it's turning out.
Subtlety is based around Tobi's basic personality. Essentially Subtlety is the essence of...well...non-subtlety. She wears bright colors, underwear on the outside, and carries around her weapon/best friend Sizzles, the happy frying pan.

This is Subtlety as she was in the original design. The green stripe tights are a commonality between all the minions. Most of the SHAPE of the original costume is still present in the redesign, particularly since we found keeping the underwear on the outside really important to her costume as it represents a lot of her personality. Subtlety, if all the minions represented ages, would be the five-year old. (Retna is about 10; Corporal is  a grumpy verge-of-puberty 13)

This was my contribution to the discussion of Subtlety's redesign. Cassi and I talked about having her be leaning more towards the yellow end of the spectrum. I, being unable to quickly and effectively draw out what I'm talking about (being Disgraphic), I made this quick mashup of images to get across what I was thinking.

And this is the final product that Cassi drew out. You can see the original HERE on Cassi's blog. But clearly awesome. Subtlety is now primarily yellow based colors (green, orange and pure yellow), and absolutely BEDECKED in bells (which I LOVE)
We aren't QUITE able to bring the whole picture to life in such a short amount of time, primarily the shoes as we have neither the time nor the budget to get our hands on those beauteous high tops.

Wait! It's TUTORIAL TIME:
Dying shoes 101: 
Grade: Easy Pie

Sometimes it's really hard to find shoes that are the color you need them to be. For example, the above high tops only come in very basic converse colors (red, white and black). And I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of boot covers. They tend to be made out of thin fabric and they LOOK it. It's really hard to make boot covers out of fabric that actually looks like something a shoe would be made out of. So sometimes, it's just better to dye.

Side note: Don't PAINT them. We have tried it and it usually results in splotchy coloring or shoe shrinkage/stiffness. Not awesome.

Sometime I'll do a better tutorial of the actual dying process, but for now you just have to put up with the basics here.

Take a good brand of dye. (by 'good' I mean not something that shows happy 5 year olds at a tye-dye party. Don't judge books by the cover, but you can totally be dye-judgemental. If it looks professional, it probably is, more or less).

Put it in a nice bucket or basin of warm/hot water. Make it hot, but not so hot that you can't keep your hands in it. The bucket needs to be big enough to fit the shoes, but don't overfill it with water, or you risk washing out the color too much (literally).

Now: the shoes need to be something that will take dye. Usually you can feel if a fabric is dyeable. If it feels fibrous it will probably dye. It its more slick or rubbery (even if it's cloth) it might not dye well. If you want to dye shoes, best to stick with canvas.

Alright, now dunk 'em! Pull them out every so often to check the progress. Swill the water through the shoe, and try and give everything an even current. When they are the appropriate color, pull them out and put them somewhere easy to dry! Tada! Easy.



BACK TO THE TOPIC:
So today Tobi and I got together and began work on Subtlety. The Primary focus was getting the underwear painted and the shoes dyed. The shoes were easy. We used straight 'yellow' Tulip dye (not my favorite brand but good for really primary colors) on the shoes and laces and they came out a great color after a bit of washing through the dye.

The bra and underwear were bought super cheap at Walmart (read: Den of Evil) and amazingly already pretty good shades of yellow. We wanted something pretty conservative in shape. The last thing you need is some sexy underwear on the outside. Not hot in the slightest.
All we had to do was add the red polka dots.

First we put a trash bag over my trusty dress form Betty, and put the bra over it. Then we took a piece of thick card stock paper and cut a circle in it as a stencil, (I advise always working with stencils when fabric painting. No matter how steady your hand is, once it's on there it's not coming off). Then Tobi went to work! (It's a one man job).

We used Tulip "Soft" fabric paint. Always try and get stuff that's not gonna be stiff and crackly, particularly on stretchy fabric like a sports bra.  Again, Tulip isn't my favorite brand, and it looked too hot pink rather than red, but it appears to have dried alright.

There it is all finished! Looks pretty good!

Now, that was the easy part. The Underwear is a little more...bizarre...
For starters. What do you put it on? You want to stretch it out about as much as it will be when worn so that the dots (or whatever) don't look bizarre later. But, unlike with the bra, you can't just stick it on the dress form. So...our solution?

Andy the Panda Bear. Wrapped in a garbage sack. Provided we kept his feet inside the underwear, it was approximately the right shape and there weren't any wrinkles in it. We tried his head (seen above) but it wasn't big enough XD

Slightly awkward looking (okay, super terrible, bizarre looking), but worked pretty darn well! The number one thing about costuming is thinking outside of the box. Things are never only useful for the reason they were made for. That applies (quite clearly) to every facet of costuming.

Here's the circle pattern we made. For a second time I bring up the importance of using a stencil. It's much easier/faster/more reliable. Just make sure it's movable enough to fit the contours of the garment, but not too thin, so the paint doesn't leak through.

Now it's drying overnight and we should have a full set of polka dot underwear by tomorrow! Hurrah!


Also today: Cassi wanted Corporal to wear a pair of green Bermuda shorts with yellow accents. We couldn't find anything sufficiently colored, but we did find a pair of white shorts with yellow stripes on them. Since green and yellow are a close enough color, I figured we could dye the shorts green and the yellow would come through the dye.
Here's the result! I'm quite happy with it.

Turned out pretty good! The shorts could be more vibrant, but I think the tights makes up for the lack of blinding green.

More pictures as it happens!