Epic costumes
Aug. 21st, 2012 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm suddenly stuck on costuming for epic fantasy world.
I decided on late 14th century as inspiration for setting. If by 'inspiration' I mean 'stuff I will ignore if I feel like it'. There's some nice pointy armour going on and also bows and arrows and wars and stuff.
Costumes is easy to translate. If they're already wearing tights, adding tunics and maybe a cloak is not so much difficult. The more the distinctive bit is the colors or a symbol or something, the easier it is.
But then there's suits.
Like, Invisible SHIELD guy is wearing plain boring ordinary clothes like a bazillion other people. Except when they're stealthily higher quality. The exact fit contributes to if he's being boring dude or boss dude today.
I can make that medieval how?
So then I realised how much the little details contribute to the effect on here and now type shows, and remembered how much more I get out of British shows compared to USA or Canada set stuff, because I can read the brands and the clothes much better. Going fantasy world just dumps so much of the symbol set. You have to either invent it from scratch or be clunky and say poor bad fitting clothes vs rich carefully made ones. In so many words. And then it's boring and loses most of its use.
I can just say that the smith wears a lot of leather with burn marks on it, the guy with the traveling fair has faded out forest colors until he gets changed into ridiculously bright purple, the redhead wears tight black.
But what is business suit, and how invisible is he wearing it?
I find weird need to invent socio economic structure to dress him in.
I think this is why I went back to Stargate and Buffy style worldbuilding around the edges.
Completely separate worlds are just going to look like 'look at the weird people being weird'.
Even the names for everyone's jobs.
I decided on late 14th century as inspiration for setting. If by 'inspiration' I mean 'stuff I will ignore if I feel like it'. There's some nice pointy armour going on and also bows and arrows and wars and stuff.
Costumes is easy to translate. If they're already wearing tights, adding tunics and maybe a cloak is not so much difficult. The more the distinctive bit is the colors or a symbol or something, the easier it is.
But then there's suits.
Like, Invisible SHIELD guy is wearing plain boring ordinary clothes like a bazillion other people. Except when they're stealthily higher quality. The exact fit contributes to if he's being boring dude or boss dude today.
I can make that medieval how?
So then I realised how much the little details contribute to the effect on here and now type shows, and remembered how much more I get out of British shows compared to USA or Canada set stuff, because I can read the brands and the clothes much better. Going fantasy world just dumps so much of the symbol set. You have to either invent it from scratch or be clunky and say poor bad fitting clothes vs rich carefully made ones. In so many words. And then it's boring and loses most of its use.
I can just say that the smith wears a lot of leather with burn marks on it, the guy with the traveling fair has faded out forest colors until he gets changed into ridiculously bright purple, the redhead wears tight black.
But what is business suit, and how invisible is he wearing it?
I find weird need to invent socio economic structure to dress him in.
I think this is why I went back to Stargate and Buffy style worldbuilding around the edges.
Completely separate worlds are just going to look like 'look at the weird people being weird'.
Even the names for everyone's jobs.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-22 04:07 am (UTC)~