Death Eater Costume - Making materials look worn help!

[Hinkypunk]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on making costumes, not even just DE costumes, looking old and worn.

IE, easy ways to fray material, tips on how to take the death eater masks from shiny and pristine metal looking to old and tarnished metal.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Contec]

what are the material that the mask is made from?

 

[Hinkypunk]

the top layer is paperclay. I was gonna spray paint it with some metallics, but i wasnt sure if i should hold off before i do that in case there is something else that might work better

 

[Pete SSS]

It's really just a case of applying thin layers of paint, woodstains, coloured furniture wax, inks, anything with a bit of colour really. Just do it slowly, apply one layer , then wipe it off and see how it looks, if you want to go a bit further, try something else. It can just be a bit of trial and error.

A good way to get a rusty look, is to apply some watered down PVA to the mask, then sprinkle on some iron powder, once it's just beginning to set, flood the area with vinigar and leave it to eat up the iron. It makes real rust which can look great.

These are the techniques I use on my death eater masks, but they are fibreglass, so they can withstand a good soaking, you'll need to be careful not to get too wet if your using paper based masks.

 

[Hinkypunk]

Sorry, PVA?

 

[Robert412]

To make the robes look old, cornstarch. It is what Nine Inch Nails used on the self destruct tour in '94. It's also a haunted house trick for zombies and the like. It makes them look dusty in a convincing way. Plus you can rub the garment against itself to lighten the concentration of the starch. Also, it isn't permanent, so you don't ruin your garment.

Freying material... Cheese grater and a washing machine. Another zombie trick. I actually would wear the garment and grate the wear points, slightly at first. Wash it. See what you get. Repeat. You don't want to grate a hole in it, let the washing machine do that. Just weaken the fabric enough to give with the stress of washing and drying. I had a mid nineties party andade a never worn pair of jeans look period corrrect for a Seattle grunge look in an afternoon.

As far as hard objects, I rub on acrylic paint and use a wet rag to wipe it off before it dries. In many, many layers... Like Pete says.

 

[Pete SSS]

Sorry, PVA?

White waterbased glue, Elmers in the States.

 

[Cannon]

Sandpaper is great for wearing fabric. You can even use an electric sander on heavy fabrics like denim. Hanging things out in the sun in the middle of the day can really fade fabrics (it works particularly well down here in the hot Australian summer!).

Also here's a quote from Colleen Atwood talking about working on the costumes for My Chemical Romance's "Sing" music video;
How did you make the new clothes look so old? 
"Overall, we did a lot of sanding and waxing. We sanded the costumes to soften them up and used wax that we melted with an iron to give them a shiny quality, so it would look like they've been worked in and lived in for a long time. Kind of like when you see homeless people and they're clothes look stiff."

 

[EricHart]

I usually find it's best to start off building and painting an object as if it is new, and then weathering and aging from there, rather than thinking about weathering from the beginning.

 

[Hinkypunk]

Thanks for the great tips everyone! I'm gonna try all these out this weekend. Hopefully I find a store with a nice selection of metalic paint and woodstains.

@Erichart - Reason I'm worrying about the weathering first was because I didnt want to go buy the materials to paint my mask and then someone suggests "oh you should use this material instead".

 

[kessa]

@Hinky - Sorry, I know I was going to post up my PM response to share here, but I can't access it now sadly (have posted a seperate help response to try and get it fixed)

But in the mean time, here's a brief summary.


For the Death Eaters specifically, the robes were broken down by hand. The stitching for example (in the embroidery) was unpicked and damaged (thread by thread!:eek) by the costume team.

The Harry Potter costume drama documentary is a great source of info for this aspect in particular.

Video Footage:
By far, this is the best place to start if you want an insight into the various costumes.
ITV - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - The Costume Drama. (made by "Kindle")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKKbxv8iMI part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3nO1Lmt7fw part 2 (check this part of out for the Death Eaters and Voldemort)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdSrkFNLzrE part 3

TV - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Behind the Magic. (Granada Television / Kindle)
- This is quite useful for a bit of general background research and also shows snippets of the costumes so is also a useful starting point but doesn't have as much in depth info as the ones above.

Sadly the Youtube links I had to it are no longer available, but I'm sure a fresh search with the info above would pull up some new ones.



Death Eater's aside, I would say then whenever you're weathering something you should think about:

* what the character is / what do they do generally
* what do they do in that specific outfit i.e. what are they likely to come across during it's use which will weather it / what stresses will it be under, etc)
* the characters personality
* the age of the costume
* whether money, ego, etc are issues
* where the costume has been kept, used, etc

To put this into some context for the Death Eaters for example...

Lucius is a well known, high ranking Death Eater with lots of money and an ego to boot. As a result he'd be proud of his DE outfit, and would ensure it was the best around and always in tip-top condition.

Equally, it's unlikely he'd directly get his hands dirty if he could help it, so it's likely his robes would be less worn than a "lesser" Death Eater.


In contrast, Bella (who is equally as high ranking as Lucius) at one time seems to have some quite intricate robes, but as time has gone on (and since her incarceration in Azkaban), she's become a very dark, twisted character, and so personal image is the last thing on her mind.

As a result, her robes are much more frayed, and although they're not "dirty", the do look like they've haven't been washed for a very long time (as does her hair, nails, etc)

So if you were weathering a Bella costume, you could go much more to town that you would for Lucius

(I hope this is all making sense)


I think there are 2 sides to weathering. If you're going for an accurate recreation of a known character, then it's great to be able to try to recreate that as close as possible.

However, for "generic" characters (or if you're not going for a full on recreation), then I think just getting in the mindset of the character's environment should help you get some pretty good results.

If we can salvage that sent PM (or if you still have it, drop me a copy) I'll try to add anything I may have missed.

 

[tango]

Death Eater's aside, I would say then whenever you're weathering something you should think about:

* what the character is / what do they do generally
* what do they do in that specific outfit i.e. what are they likely to come across during it's use which will weather it / what stresses will it be under, etc)
* the characters personality
* the age of the costume
* whether money, ego, etc are issues
* where the costume has been kept, used, etc

I think there are 2 sides to weathering. If you're going for an accurate recreation of a known character, then it's great to be able to try to recreate that as close as possible.

However, for "generic" characters (or if you're not going for a full on recreation), then I think just getting in the mindset of the character's environment should help you get some pretty good results.

Great advice!