My winter technical theater jury, costume construction.
Joan of Arc, inspiration taken from French medieval art and historical research.
Plastic, cotton fabric, muslin, burlap and leather.
This costume was made with a combination of materials bought by me and from the school costume shop.
Joan of Arc, inspiration taken from French medieval art and historical research.
Plastic, cotton fabric, muslin, burlap and leather.
This costume was made with a combination of materials bought by me and from the school costume shop.
1. I first researched French medieval art to get an accurate image of what soldiers were wearing at the time.
2. I then found images of physical suits of armour to see the detail and three dimensional makeup of how the suits of armour were put together.
3. I created my rendering and included fabric samples and a colour palette at the bottom of the rendering. I used online references for the anatomy of the drawing.
4. Using a heat gun, I softened the plastic of a trashcan to a point that a boxcutter could cut through the plastic smoothly. After cutting out a flat sheet of plastic, I heat the peak of the sheet of plastic and the sides to round to the chest of a person and look like the curvature of armour.
5. Next, I shaped the exact lines of the breastplate using industrial scissors.
6. I heated the breastplate further, creating shallow dents at the waistline.
7. I then created similar shallow dents at the crest of the breastplate.
8. Using the plastic of a second trashcan, I cut two medium squares and began using the heat gun to heat them in the curve of shoulders. This was difficult because plastic does not naturally bend in a round way, and I needed to be very careful that I did not burn the plastic. I cut the shoulder pieces into a diamond shape after curving them enough, and finished by curving the edges inward.
9. At this point, I took the armour pieces outside to be spray painted. Though not pictured, I cut out a large square of plastic for the back piece and heat the edges to curve inward around the body. I spray painted all of the armour pieces over and used spray sealant as the final coat. While drying, I sewed the tunic out of burlap and sewed the pants and stockings. Because medieval clothing was very simple, these did not take much time and did not require a pattern.
10.Once the spray paint had dried, I drilled holes into breastplate, shoulder pieces and back plate in order to fasten them together.
11. I sanded off the edges of the armour and used a burner to create designs in the plastic, since armour usually has some form of decoration on it. These designs were very simple and go around the shoulder pieces and the peak of the breastplate. I painted over them with a lighter colour of silver to cover the plastic underneath and make the details shine a bit more. I painted Modge Podge onto the most risen points of the armour in order for the paint to shine and emphasize the metallic look in the light.
12. Finally, I added leather straps with clasps at the side in order to close the armour shut when worn on my model.
The model wearing the full outfit on the day of my jury. Shoes were separately added from the school costume shop.
