The Wildling – Part 1

After my tutorial with Jonathan I felt really inspired to put some thought into making my wildling (tree stump) costume to be used in video footage.

I have two main ideas in terms of the footage:

1. Shooting the footage on site including using drone footage (drone now purchased)
2. Using a green screen and applying the new footage over existing footage – considering purchasing my own green screen materials given lack of local studios with this facility.

Either way before any of that can happen I need to have a Wildling costume.

I spent some time researching how people structure Comic-Con outfits, particularly as I had in my minds eye what I wanted to make and how I wanted it to look.

I knew I needed to use latex but didn’t really know how I was going to structure the roots of the costume.

To pull it all together I decided that the willing volunteer will need to wear a morph suit – either black for on site shooting or green for studio shoot.

So here I am with an idea for a latex suit – to make it easier I plan to make a mask, headwear – shoulder wear and gloves.

To give an authentic impression of the wildlings at Thruscross I plan to cast from bark – I’m lucky enough to have some amazing bark in my garden to cast from – and I intend to colour the latex dark brown.

• Shoulder-wear: The shoulder-wear is going to be supported by a black vinyl waistcoat with oddly spaced roots around the shoulders. For each root I will use cotton wool at the core wrapped in kitchen towel and the gaffa tape before finally using latex to add the finishing touches.
• Gloves: I have purchased some rubber gloves which I intend to make three roots per hand from using the same technique as the shoulder-wear.
• Head-wear: I intend to sculpt a head piece casting the bark master in the garden before creating the latex copy. I intend to strengthen the latex with a wire mesh and mould the head piece so it blends with the shoulders.
• Mask: This is currently a maybe as I’m not entirely sure it’s required.

Reflection

This is my current stage of thinking and I am sure as this progresses, my opinion will change. I think I’ve spent enough time thinking it through and feel its now time to put my thoughts into action.

It’s not often I actually draw anything any more so I really enjoyed sketching my plans for this. It reminded me that as a child I was always drawing designs for costumes so this is definitely something that has stayed with me through my life.