Elsa from Frozen! Nightmare mode set.

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(All studio photos created and edited by by Sylvie Kirkman of Little Noise Photography, please do not redistribute without her permission)

I did a test run a few weeks ago to trial a pattern, support idea. I am not happy with the shape I got (I had to make it in two days, I needed an existing support and that was a c1890 corset). But I was so happy with the general scheme that I wound up commiting to my ultimate idea


Firstly the idea:
~Dress as a single dress over a supportive construction- laced interior and hook and eyes over.
~Cape- hand dyed.. will think about the ice particles and snow flakes later (solved!)
~Wig- lace front wig and wefts combined (still waiting on finding some in stock in the right colour, I have 613 which is all over ebay. It's a hair too yellow.
~Shoes built over some existing shoes- wet formed leather and a clear heel, I was going to cast in flexible resin but her shoes are opaque)

Materials:
So the main fabric of the skirt. Okay, thanks for a totally made up fabric and pattern. The texture is that of a knit but then there is a separate high gloss light layer. I have seen some knits that are a nice match with a silver highlight but.. my first thought When Elsa steps on to her balcony was "MACKIE!!!" Now I can't afford the bugle beaded silk georgette that would make this so Mackie but I went for a good alternative.

2mm sequins sewn flat to a net. I have seen this as a high gloss with a random sprinkle but not in rows. Until Spandexhouse came on my radar and boom! Turquoise 22m sequins flat in rows! And matte! Which makes for a fluid metallic fabric. But the turquose was too dark and too blue. I was going to order some urethane paint base but then suddenly it hit me. Try Resolene. Try Resolene.

It works:
[video]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/L8PCBEiNEns?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/video]
Elsa painting!! ZOMGZOMGZOMG!!! | The Plain Jane Costume Chronicles
Sans flash (closer to reality), with flash and with some interference green just painted on with IA:

So I'll be able to make all my materials match!

Elsa new fabrics | The Plain Jane Costume Chronicles


I have just spent the day dying my new net and charmeus lining to the right shade. The power net went a little too dark so I may have to get some more and then just cold dye it.
Those plastic sheets are to make my own sequins however I suspect I'll actually wind up using thin styrene painted to match the new sequin colour.

 

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And now I have seven snowflakes as line art on my computer. Close enough that I can use them to print and use as stencils, not good enough to share. Once I've got the proportions sorted I'll make them available- and learn illustration while I'm at it.... Hopefully none are bigger than a letter or A4 sheet of paper, but I don't know yet as I haven't put them on my template!

Okay so I have brute made 5 and two are duplicates, shhhh

Ahhhh! Splicing placeholders over my actual pattern shows how much fuller we are making aour capes. But I do think it makes for better flow. Pattern and actual cape. The cape is about 2.4m long from shoulder blades to hem in the artwork (for my height) and I had about 2.58 and I have even more of the new net

 

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My additional fabric shipped!!! Woot! The sequins I have are:
turquoise
Style: Seq-446
Width: 57''
Stretch: 2 Way St
Color: Turquoise
Per Yard Price: $15.00
Size: 2mm
Description: Turquoise Matte Finished Sequins on Turquoise Poly Stretch Mesh

So compare the site, my phone without flash and with:

My photo without flash is truest to life on both my camera and my desktop monitors.

The frustrating thing about this gown is that at the cinema her dress is much much greener than the hi res desktop images shared (and used on print media). It's actually green enough to use green to describe it. The promo material is a nice turquoise. And the screencaps people have made are very blue! The blue is what people remember.

So I'm going to aim for the promo colours. So this means turquoise gown, pale aqua sleeves and darker warmer blue for the cape. The base anyway. My patterns will be green blue and very light. Then beads or other texture over that.

Here is another issue:

Monitor tones will vary, but so do programs! Same image in windows Photo Gallery and an image editing program. Well see how it displays in a browser next....
Okay, my browser matches them both to each other! I suspect there is an issue with my image viewer being too warm toned...
Frustrations aside, that is a great view of the back of the bodice and it shows that unlike her coronation gown and any of Anna's gowns the bodice dips in the front and back. It also shows how high it is cut on the hip. And this is why I'm making a separate boned support layer. As it will be separate the gown should flow over the top well.

 

[andveryginger]

Loving this -- all the detail and the prep work you've got going. Looking forward to seeing how you tackle it all, and how it comes together!

 

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Thank you I am so digging all the Elsa's that are being made So fun seeing different interpretations

So, I have had a chance to read the art book and there are a few passages that illuminate what they were thinking when designing. Of note it the tense- everything is written as if it was pre-production. So I'll add in my conclusions below.

Giaimo put Elsa in a triangular aqua cape decorated with snowflake patterns.

I think this describes the art work which is indeed aqua. The final result is definitely not aqua-except as an overlay of light in some scenes.

"Elsa's palette suggesta a beautiful ice crystal," he explains. "She is a walking effect in the way those colours reflect and refract."

Yay! Also if you look at the artwork everything that is ice is coloured- usually in the blue shades but even to pink shades.

"I'm attracted to colour schemes that have close analagous relationships. It creates a striking effect."

With her subtle mauve crew-neck top, paired with her icy blue cape and warm blue dress, Elsa's colour palette is exquisitely harmonious."

There is a lot of info here. Colourwise this confirms her sleeves are mauve (they tint to aqua at the wrist- it's incredibly marked in some promo artwork and washed out in others. This is why promo-artwork can be a bit of a mixed bag- the models are rendered and then there is further editing to alter colour, proportions, add more hair etc. Like you expect in image processing for real people as well.
But the colours of the cape and the dress are reversed in the final model for the film. When you look at the artwork this is indeed the colour scheme even if it is hard to see the dress underneath!
Also interesting to see how the sleeved undershirt is defined as having a crew neck. A crew neck is supposed to fit to the neck, Elsa has a dropped shoulder/nearly off the shoulder neckline.

For Elsa's cape, they want to have a crisp, almost unrealistic triangle shape to it. Gravity would probbaly dip the cape down, but they want to pull that off and not have it feel distracting.
-Wayne Unten, supervising animator

Which explains some of the rigid animation is scenes inside her palace of ice vs how it is almost in free fall on the fjord.

Early on, Mike put Elsa, once she is the snow queen, in this stunning lace cape made out of ice. That cape set the bar very high for a design sensibility, particularly for Elsa's world, that was very beautiful but also very modern.
John Lasseter in the Preface

We have normal ice.. there there's Elsa's magical ice. There are two different sets of shapes and colours. Deep ice has really strong blues as opposed to thin ice, which is greys and whites.
-Cory loftis, visual development artist.

So we have Elsa's gown and cape as deep ice and the decorations as light ice. I think we kind of know this of we've had a chance to see iceburgs or glaciers in person or in good photos Just nice to know this is probably part of the inspiration and thought process

We also came up with the idea of Elsa having a signature snowflake shape. If you saw it anywhere in the movie, you'd know it wasn't nature, it was her.
-Dan Lund, effects artist

Michael Giaimo used the word panache to describe the design sense on Frozen, and that's Elsa to a T, stylish original, and confident. From the column dress with leg slit and train, to the ethereal frost cape that needed to be magical yet believable, to her gorgeous almost flame licked hair.
-Keith Wilson, sim lead.

Many of our samples came from the Disney Parks costume division in Fullerton, California, where we got further education and recommendations. This collaboration translated directly to the walk-around costume interpretations for Disney’s Theme Parks, when that time came. It really helps when a studio has those kind of extensive resources!”

Costume Design in Animation - Disney's Frozen - Tyranny of Style
So yes, yes it is possible to look at the park costume and use some of their samples for ideas

While typing this up the last of my fabric arrived! Hooray! I am so in love with this fabric!

So I also had a bit of a "dur" moment. I don't want to make a full corset (though I had planned on it) due to the rigidity. So then I thought about alternatives and I remembered the 7 of 9 understructure and how ideal that is- powernet and shaped panels and a supportive bust area. So I may be making my undershirt as a full bodysuit with boning and bust cups. I would make it a separate garment but I really want to avoid as many layers as I can.

I am still aiming to make the dress as a single piece due in part to how the decorations of the lower edge of the body area taper and disapear and the high shape on the hips. Which would be doable by making the bodice as a net piece and I'm just... no.

So today is tidy and store day as I have new square buckets to store everything in! So to go listen to my other current musical inspiration (well it has been for decades but I'm finally finishing my silliest costume from it) Phantom of the Opera. Or maybe Wicked as well.

 

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Had a small test of the urethane resin as a medium for the pigments. Not entirely sure but it is glossier than the resolene and I'll see if I can use if in some way or another.

Making sequins/spangles | The Plain Jane Costume Chronicles

Shimmer Sheetz | Elizabeth Craft Designs, Inc.
I used blue iris and I just ordered the gemstone turquoise because:

I'm about to measure to see how many sequins you can get out of a pack- I use metric but will try for both!

 

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You can do a minimum of 10X15 per sheet and there are 3 sheets per pack. I just received my Turquoise and they are a good deal deeper. So I'll be testing them at some stage.

I also had a small issue with some sheets being easy to scrape- seems less easy to do once cut into sequins. Actually overlapping seems to help even more.

 

[panterateama]

Great looking so far... me and my 2yo daughter have watch this movie and the youtube videos so many times that she knows all the songs lol

 

[Agent Coulson]

Beautiful work and attention to detail. I just finished working my girfriends Elsa and her friends Anna last month.
The most difficult part was finding the right materials/ colors for Elsa. We ended up going with a slightly darker shade of blue then planned, but we are very happy with the end results and thanks to our amazing friend who helped us sew it all together!
Keep up the great work and thank you for sharing with us!

 

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The blue! It's very hard, but also difficult to account for lighting and photography and digital display after My fabrics are far too dark in person but when photgraphed colour shift slightly

And I have just gone and bought a new sequin material to try
Glossy Cornflower sequin film. 5m roll
My other option was to spend a small fortune to ship 25kg after testing samples- from what I can tell the same shade of blue is the only pale blue they offer anyway.

I'm being slightly distracted by the evil queen, wicked witch and Maleficent right now (multiple sources) and am thinking about horns, green skin, sequinned gown, high collar and horns....

Pretty heavily leaning towards Maleficent from the original cartoon, the new movie and then raiding Regina's wardrobe and Zalena's make up from Once Upon a Time

 

[Twananas]

Looking forward to seeing the finished dress! I think I found my dress fabric. I quite like how it reflects. Depending on the light it looks very blue or green in pictures however it's more towards a blue shade than green.

 

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Very nice And a similar idea to how the Glinda Bubble gowns are made

I have new sequin film.
My @JosyRose_Tweet sequin film arrived | The Plain Jane Costume Chronicles


It's about as light as the shimmer sheets but not as green tinted. I'm not sure how it compares to other "cornflower" blue products and I am waiting on my bank account to resettle after paying some big bills (hello kitty and his ulcer and soon his teeth and um... skin cancer... sigh.)


But I think he may be worth it

 

[Twananas]

I hope your cat will be fine!

The flat piece is very nice in colour!

I ordered a few small packs to match colours (6 of them) and OMG I LOVE the Satin Boy Blue and Glossy Sky Blue, however they stopped making it and cut up all they had. I ordered a bunch of square cut sequins as they are big enough for what I want and I will round the corners and make them more rectangular. I ordered a few pack of random colours next to it to make a nicer colour pattern. I also got Clear Antique Silver and Clear Green Aqua film to make my own sequins. I will start my own thread when I will start on making the costume.

Picture: Satin Boy Blue, Glossy Cornflower, Glossy Sky Blue and Clear Green Aqua. Also a much more true colour of the fabric.

 

[Athanasios]

This is looking great so far! I love the choice of materials, it really seems to capture the original look (in the movie, I mean) very well!

 

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Thank you I've just made a purchase of some fabric to make a supportive understructure I was going to use power net but this stuff is hardcore heavy duty less pretty spanx stuff My aim is to be able to make a garment that won't be visible underneath a fitted strapless gown or indeed even under a bodysuit. Elsa wrinkled her bodice and skirt in just such a way that you need to be able to have as much movement as possible.

I'm also hoping my net dyeing nightmares are nearly over. I have a cunning plan. But today I managed to score fabric and materials for three of my projects (Maleficent robe and hem/collar fabric, elsa undergarment and Elissa chain beading )

 

[Athanasios]

A supportive understructure for which part? Also, what's power net? (I looked it up, all I got were picture of modems )

So you're saying you want to make something that will fit under the blue dress you've already completed? Yeah, I've tried dying a net-like fabric... with tea bags. Not fun, to say the least.

 

[FANGS]

Such wonderful detail! Thank you SO much for all of your efforts in sharing what you're doing with all of us!

Let me know how things go with the powernet. I bought some for a project and ended up not using it but still have it kicking around.

 

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Thank you I've decided to leave the powernet for the undershirt as I really do need something very supportive as I have a very curvy shape, too curvy really. I have a very vintage lower half which goes against modern aesthetics of a flat belly and low hips.

So I need something a bit like a boy cut short on a bunny bodysuit

My phone just deleted all my images. All of them. There was a double up of folders, I deleted the empty one but apparently it was a ghost and boom. All gone.

So I'll get photos tomorrow I hope

Luckily I backed up the photos a couple of days ago so I should only have lost the stuff from tonight and yesterday. Actually since 24th March. Whoops.

 

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A test of the cutting powers of a cutting machine.. I really love how the iris effect becomes super subtle once the sequins are cut. It winds up absolutely perfect with very little purple tone. So now I am torn. This is the Shimmer Sheetz stuff so the colour is so good with the slightly green hue. I do though need to test all the film I have as well as see if the more sticky support sheet will work better

And I need to decide on a method of fastening. I'll have to see if the machine will do tiny tiny holes or if it will cause a structural weakness.

The cutting machine is also going to be a life saver when it comes to stencils for my cape

 

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Hooray for standard patterns preloaded am I right? Brother Scan n Cut to make rounded rectangular sequins. Three shades, Blue Iris (slightly green tinted), cornflower blue (baby blue) and turquoise. None were quite right laid separately but mixed together they work!