Into the Workshop...

After my tutorial with Adele I started thinking about my costume in terms if how I am going to construct it technically and how I will decorate it.

The first thing I did was to go into the workshop and speak to Julia, a technician in there, to see what she thought would be the simplest way to construct the costume taking into account it was going to be made en masse at some point. She told me I would be best to construct half the head out of clay, vac-form it and fill it with plaster. I would then be able to use the plaster cast over and over again. I would also have to make the opposite side of the head and form both sides in plasterzote and glue them together to create the head shape.

I had a number of problems when making the proto type for my costume. I had to rebuild in clay a number of times to get the correct shape and even when this was correct things still kept going wrong. When I had finally got the right shape and moulded it in plaster I had to re-do this as someone moved it in the workshop because someone moved it before it had set and it cracked. After this I also had to build up on top of the plaster with clay as it still was not the right shape. 

From this I vac-formed the shape in plasterzote to see if it was the correct shape to fit on a childs head. I also vac-formed the shape of the eye I wanted to use and attached the two together using cable ties like I will on the real costumes.

 This is the shape that came out of the vac-form machine which is the shape of the plaster mould it has been formed around.
This is the shape of the half head after it has been cut out and the eye attached.

Then I had to construct the opposite side of the head and try and match up the two sides. I found this very difficult as it is such a strange shape it was hard to see what I needed to change. 

I am very pleased with the overall shape of the half head and even though it has been very time consuming and frustrating at times I am very pleased with the outcome. It has also been very educational to be in the workshop, working with new materials and machine to create a costume in a different material other than fabric.