Flameheart Costume - Personal Project - Part 1

 For Halloween this year, I really wanted to go as Flameheart, a character from my favorite novel/comic/videogame series, Sea of Thieves, but I wanted to seriously recreate his whole ensemble. The first order of business was to get good reference photos.

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Concept art and in game screenshots are all well and good, but not very good for getting dimensions, so I tried searching for his character model, and lo and behold, I found it on sketchfab.com, the full and detailed model (which had been datamined from the game's files; this is against the Terms of Service, but I'm not the one who datamined it, so I can't get in trouble for using it).

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I screenshotted him from many different angles, making sure to get all 4 sides and close up angles of the complicated tricorn hat. I also decided I wanted to add my own little flair to the jacket and give it orange lining on the inside.

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The next difficulty was finding the right materials. I always pictured the jacket feeling like exposed leather, the side that isn't smooth. I couldn't find anything online or at Joann's that felt quite right, until...

I found the PERFECT material at the dress giveaway after the fashion show, this nice, soft, maroon fabric that was almost the EXACT shade of his jacket! I didn't get a picture of it before I started taking apart the pieces of the dress to get just the material I wanted and not the pattern in the middle, as it was a medieval style dress, though I'm not sure what it was originally used for.

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I used a seam ripper and took apart the materials on the jacket and immediately started putting together the jacket. There was a lot of extra material, so I didn't really need to worry about making it too small, though because of how the dress was made, there was less of the material I wanted at the waist and more of the patterned material, so that would be a problem I would need to solve in the future. I decided to use the material from the left sleeve, as Flameheart doesn't have a left sleeve. after using a sewing machine to put together the skeleton of the jacket, I cut out the general shape of the bottom and used the leftover material to make the smock at the top of his jacket. I also used the patterned material around the upper shoulders of the jacket in order to save material, since the smock would cover it.

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*Picture I took on Instagram of the fabrics and materials together to show my friends.*

Once that was done with, I got the material for the thick gray edges of the jacket at Joann's, and found a nice orange fire patterned material I could use for the lining. Using the jacket I had so far as a pattern, I cut out the shape of the tails of the jacket on the orange pattern. Here is where I started seriously taking pictures of the process.

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Here you can see the jackets shape and the lining underneath, as well as the patterned fabric I have in the shoulders. I had to cut off part of the right sleeve because it was to tight on my elbow, I would later modify it to fit.

I then sewed it to the material and flipped it from inside out to right side in to get the lining.

Picture of me showing off the completed lining (of the bottom half of the jacket).

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Next I went to start working on the gray edges with the guidance of my mom, since I didn't really know how to go about this part.

Preparing to cut material for the edges of the smock, featuring my cat Vanilla Bean.

Preparing to iron the edges to get a good crease in the fabric.

Collar & stiffening material pre-sewing on.

Jacket with collar and smock attached.

 

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After all that, I started working on a rough plan for the hat design, and it was pretty successful.

Mini hat made of paper on a small skull.

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I then made a to scale paper pattern for my head, and did the gray edges for the under part of the jacket, though I may have gone too thick.

my shoes look particularly awkward in this picture.

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From there, I finished the gray edges and fixed the sleeve, but that was all I was able to get done in time for Halloween, so I wore a generic pirate hat instead of Flameheart's.

The jacket before Halloween.

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I am planning on finishing this jacket to hopefully wear to a Comic Con or Renaissance Festival, but here is a list of things to still be done for the costume:

- Orange lining for the top half of the inside of the jacket

- Fix the hemming on the smock

- Make the hat

- Get big black/gray platform boots

- Make the thick fingerless glove

- Earring & heart necklace

- Make the Burning Blade

- Figure out beard & makeup

- Decorative bones

I am unsure whether I want to make a shirt with a ribcage or have no shirt underneath the jacket to do a human Flameheart look.

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Flameheart cutscenes/monologues you should watch because I love this character:

Flameheart's Release

Flameheart Ghost Fleet Monologue

Alternate Ghost Fleet Monologue

Flameheart Wins Return of the Damned Community Vote

Ritual of the Flame (time stamp - 2:22)

"Become a Villain" Trailer

Returning the Burning Blade

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Odd Jobs in Tech 2

I switched to the Tech 2 class in second quarter which caused some wonkiness, but before I left I drew a model for costume concepts during our costume design lessons which I will upload a picture of as soon as I find my notebook.

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I have mainly done odd jobs so far since I switched to Tech 2, I started by attaching grommets to the backdrops so they could be hung up, then I worked on making the hanging fairy bottles for Midsummer, and also on attaching vines and the bottles to the 2 bars.

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Above is me on a tech work day, showing off my work on Kristofferson's bottles idea before running off to do my Marching Band MPA responsibilities.

[find a picture of the set to show off the flats, vines, and bottles together]

This is the whole set, which you can see some of the stuff that I did working together with all the other work that the amazingly talented people in our theater did.

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Here's me in my Tom Snout wall costume, which I cut the bricks on the side out of, as well as repairing it with staples when it broke. I hope the performances get uploaded to Youtube, I have yet to see myself act.

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Lion King Diorama

 This was a diorama me, Jocelyn, Izzy, and 2 others (I'm terrible with names, I can't recall them right now, so sorry to them!) worked on for a project in Tech 1 to be a set from The Lion King musical on our stage, about a month ago. Unfortunately, I didn't get many progress photos, but I did get some.

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This was from the first day, we cut out the general shape of the proscenium & thrust and tried our best to guesstimate the height of the curtain.

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This is where we forgot to keep taking pictures, but we did take pictures of the final product once we finished it.

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Here was the finished product from the front, you can see Jocelyn painted the floor and walls to match the East Lake theater (seeing the slats at the back is reminding me of a conversation I had with Mr. Black about how the theater was made, they were running out of budget as they were building it, and cut the original plan of having a 2nd floor of seats; as well as the lobby restrooms, which were eventually built in 2017; the wooden slats aren't supposed to be exposed how they are, if you go to Pinellas Park high school you can see how our theater was meant to look).

Anyway, continuing with the diorama; we made a lake, an excessively large tree flat, and grass to line the entire stage. We also made a large Mufasa head to hang from the fly system and a small pride rock to be off in the distance. The girl I can't remember the name of did a great job with making the curtains and the boy whose name also escapes me drew the Mufasa head.

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Here you can see the "fly system" from above and behind, as well as the clouds that you can't see from the front. I thought the way we did this was rather creative.

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We also made some costume concepts for the Lion King which I liked, but I can't find the paper they were on.

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Concepts / Designs

Here are some concepts I worked on for A Midsummer Nights Dream, although they never really went past concepts.

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Above are ideas I had for the mechanicals' play about 2 weeks ago, Thisbe wearing a stereotypical princess hat, the moon wearing a round cheese hat, the wall wearing a bunch of papers to look like bricks. I also had the idea of having a makeshift curtain made out of a door and shower curtain, but the door ended up getting used for the one act.

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Here was a concept for a tree as a centerpiece which I made for an assignment in my Tech 1 class; I really liked the mangrove tree idea, but the tree didn't pan out. I will say I did really enjoy the final product for the giant rock, it was so pretty, especially with the fairy lights in the interior and the bottles hanging behind it.

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Initial Ideas / Research

My areas of focus will be set, costume, and possibly sound design, centered around the rude mechanicals' play.

My experience in these areas have been that I am familiar with construction, as I have taken several years of engineering courses, I am familiar with working with clothing and costumes as I have made costumes for both Halloween and as a hobby for a long time, and I am familiar with the use of sound design because I have been in music courses like Band and Music Theory for years (and written some of my own music) as well as having researched sound design for film.

I want to work with this scene in particular because I want the comedy to be visual as much as it is auditory, and I think I will enjoy working with this scene.

I think that this will challenge me creatively and improve my skills in crafting costumes (sewing, most specifically) as well as experience in using sound in conjunction with other elements of storytelling.

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Me and my sister watched the most recent globe theater production of midsummer night’s dream (on Youtube) and I really liked how they did it there, with a mini dysfunctional curtain, a raised platform, and a wicker basket wall.

2013 Globe Theater production of AMND

I’d also like to mess around with the costumes. I like how they did the wall in the production below, and I like the idea of the royalty being down in the audience below, maybe in in the front row or scattered throughout,

1991 production of AMND

Having them in the audience without mics even might make it more interactive for the audience, maybe moving the lights around to point at them when they speak.

One thing I want to pull off is the foot getting stuck joke (that the globe theater does), so a raised platform would be good in order to have the foot break through the floor. The thrust stage idea that Dr. Power had might work for this as well, to make the ridicule from the Duke and his wife make more sense because of the history with the thrust stage. A small, poorly made thrust stage would accentuate the humor of the scene (since I wrote this, a decently sized thrust stage has already been made, I will have to come up with another idea for the stuck foot joke, or do something else instead).

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