I guess my main message is thank you to everyone I had a chance to work with, and congratulations on a successful semester!

First off, being a designer for a musical means being creative, and working well with other people’s ideas. Putting on a production, musical or not, is a collaborative effort. But, working as a Make-Up Designer, I have to work side by side with Costumes. If I choose make up that doesn’t suit the costume, then I have to start all over.

When working on a show it is crucial to be passionate about your work. Love your work. If you are submitting ideas that you don’t feel strongly about, you may be affecting another designer’s work and process. I must also remember to speak up if I want something in a design. The point of collaborating is being able to openly discuss opinions and ideas, while respecting those around you.

For Rocky Horror Show, Sarah and I have discussed in detail what we would like to convey in the show. We have agreed on time periods, inspiration images, and research; making sure that we are a team on this show. We have both discussed finding inspirations in David Bowie and Elton John, and discussed the importance of what the time period means to the text.

Our first design concept meeting is tomorrow, so many designs I have imagined may change by then; but making those first steps in creation is crucial to the design process.

All of the designers for Rocky Horror Show may have a long way to go from here, but judging by Sarah and mine’s commitment to helping one another; this show will have a strong collaborative effort done by all designers, assistants, technicians, and faculty.

Thanks guys!

Kiera

I’ve included a video interview with him done at Festival of Fear, a video of him explaining his design process, and a link to his website as well. Please give him a look, but for those easily spooked, you may want to pass on some of his more…brutal shots. Regardless, I hope you all can appreciate his works as much as I have over the years.

http://www.joshuahoffine.com/#/1

Thanks guys!

Kiera

Thankfully, I think that the strike for “Urinetown” did a lot to get me into the headspace for the season.  It was a long, grueling day where myself and other student spent covered in saw dust, arms sore from unscrewing thousands of screw from the set.

I woke up this morning the sorest I’ve been in many months, but at the same time I know it is only prelude to what will be the next four months for me.  And I can’t wait.  I hope everybody has a great, restful, relaxing summer…because I definitely won’t be.  But that’s ok, because even when this job beats you down, I still can’t help but love it.

And the money doesn’t hurt either.

The first real intensive design work I did with the program was in designing my set for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, where I started by building a model of the drama theatre, and then went on to design my set inside of the model.  This gave me a chance to get an idea of what my physical bristol board model would look like.

Doing this made building my model so much easier.  I wasn’t simply adding pieces here and there and seeing what worked, cutting out each piece and gluing it.  I had already figured out what I wanted to do.

This also helped me later in the semester after I had my hand surgery.  Because I was unable to use my right hand completely, I did a rough design of a possible set for “The America Play”, this time not just building the playing space but also using another benefit of the program.  There are thousands of prebuilt elements that can be simply downloaded and added into the model.

and while this set would ultimately go through several more revisions, being able to find elements that worked and did not was also very helpful.

Elmer’s White Glue – Elmer’s glue is your basic school glue. It generally dries clear.  It is somewhat thin, and therefore does not lend itself to the building of dimensional objects.  Elmer’s Glue is best for gluing pieces of paper to other pieces of paper.  One way to do this is by watering the glue down slightly.  This thins it to more of the consistency of paint, allowing you to paint it on with a paintbrush, therefore getting it only exactly where it needs to be.  Elmer’s glue does not take paint well, so any surface will need gesso-ing before painting.

Tacky Glue / Sobo – Tacky Glue is much thicker than Elmer’s Glue.  Therefore it lends itself easily to gluing together dimensional pieces, such as cut-and-fold furniture.  One major downside to Tacky Glue is its slow drying time.  You will end up spending a lot of your time holding pieces together, waiting for them to dry.

Spray Adhesive – Spray adhesive comes in an aerosol can.  It is best used for evenly attaching paper patterns to Bristol board or foamcore.  The upside to spray adhesive is that is applies quickly and evenly.  IF you use little enough, you can attach a pattern, cut the piece out, and then remove the pattern.  The downside to spray adhesive has the same origin as its upside.  Since it comes out of an aerosol can, it covers a large area at once, often a much larger area than you need.  This requires putting down paper or something else to protect your work surface, since another downside is that anywhere you put spray adhesive will remain sticky indefinitely.

Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive – Quick Dry adhesive is like Tacky Glue without its one major downside; the drying time.  It dries twice as fast as Tacky Glue, meaning you waste less time sitting holding two pieces of Bristol board together.  It is a good all-purpose glue for model building.

Krazy Glue – Krazy Glue dries crazy fast.  It works well for quickly repairing pieces that have broken.  It comes in very small tubes, in liquid or gel form.  The Gel is often easier to work with, as it doesn’t drip all over the place.

This semester, I was Costume Designer for the production of “Urinetown the Musical” at SUNY University at Buffalo.  With regards to the above, I am specifically referring to the female “Twah-lette” costumes that were created.  After discussions with the director and other designers, my thought process led me to want these dancers to appear show girl-like, but also to create the image of being toilet brushes, and included the image of toilet brushes on the bodice as well. 

Once the concept and rendering were complete, there came the complication regarding the dancers’ choreography; specifically, they were to be dancing and moving on the floor.  The initial problem I saw with this, were that fabric (even fabric supported with boning and other stiffening agents) would not keep the desired shape.  Through discussions with the costume shop, it was determined that the best course of action would be to use foam with fabric adhered, in order to create the desired shape, which would hold up under the choreographed decisions that were made.

The gathered foam created the perfect layers, which not only allowed the dancers to move as required, but fully transformed my rendering image into reality.  Throughout this process, I have learned that unconventional materials are sometimes the best materials for the job at hand.  It has also inspired me to create a cross-referenced table of unconventional materials and their properties, so that in the future, I’ll have a list of materials that can perform different tasks, and inspire greater costumes.

The second step is to gain my own direction.
Once I have solved the issue of getting motivated I need to find a problem to solve. I can usually do this by defining parameters by which to contain the design, this creates an isolated problem in which I can work from many directions to find a solution. To define these parameters I like to break down ideas in the show   into one concise, poetic statement that defines some aspect of the show (action, mood, themes). I can use this as a grounding for my view of the show while talking to designers and directors.

These two steps lead to a great place jumping off point to create any kind of design. It boils down the show to the essence of what is happening to constrain it to the text, while be flexible enough for the director to make decisions on how the overall productions will look.

I have found an issue with this beginning process, I will create an analogy within the concise summary statement that is difficult to alter if the director views the show fundamentally different than I, which of course plays into my natural stubbornness.