Final Designs

Below are my final designs for the four main characters of AST:

I am very happy with the success of photoshop in this design as I laid the pattern of my scanned in fabric under the shading and additional texturing of the design. This fabric is perfect in representing the Narrators homely, family role with a soft texture and pattern but is interesting to look at as are his stories. I have allowed lots of pockets so he has many places to pull out exciting props to play with usch as his pipe, glasses, hip flask and book. The shoes and hat are smart and indicate his important status as the storyteller.

  If I were to do this design again I would hand render it only as I am not entirely happy with the photoshop finish. Its does not represent the chiffon fabric well at all as the ink conveys a solid quite statis material. Looking at my original hand drawn, rendered image the watercolour looks far more like chiffon. A further comment about photoshop here is colour use - the hair scanned in and printed much brighter than I intended. I have tried to dull it down a little with crayon and pen after printing but some of her delicacy is lost. This garment is most definitely suited to a princess with beautiful, elegat flowing fabrics to enhance her dance movements with the silk belt, brooch and metallic detailling adding luxury fit for a fairytale princess. The red hair adds a little seductive element as the Soldiers is obviously very attracted to her. This could potentially be a more expensive, time consuming outfit due to the delicate drape needed by the fabrics and cut.

 The Soldier outfit I had lots of fun creating on photoshop, in particular the trousers where I tried out lots of variants of the brush too lto achieve this texture and range of colours. I feel he is well represented as youthful, slightly naive and his origin is clear. The fabrics I have chosen could do with some further breaking down especially the trousers which could do with dome dying to make them darker also. I have added little hints of red in the braces to suggest the Devil's presence over the Soldier's soul.

This is my favoruite design due to the impact of colour and huge variety in texture. The cloak, with the fabrics I have chosen, will move in a bewitching manner. There will be little bits of mould spreading onto this scarlet cape from the Devils skin (costume). The sleeves and legs will be coloured cotton lycra suggesting mould and litchen from his never ending presence as part of the earth. The roots of wool will also show how the Devil is bound to her ways and evil is a neccessity of humanity (indicated also by the bare,human hands and feet). The hands and feet will also be make-uped to look like garment is Devils skin. The central part of the garment is deep red to signify the traditional Devil and grab attention, this will be dyed in a mottled way and blended with black to link in the leavy textural layers. The furry, twiggy arm pieces again relate to the earth and creatures, the twigs adding a harsh texture to contrast with the fur and mouldy softness. These arm pieces along with the textured neck piece, cape, textured waist piece and headress will be added as part of the Devil's dramatic transformation. I still want the garment to look as one so the technicalities of this garments structure will have to carefully considered. The headdress uses the bold yellow eyes that I wanted and antlers in place of his traditional horns. I am not sure if I am entirely satisfied with the look of the headdress - I would like it to have more height and be more textural but I shall experiment with this next year when it is being created.