PinPrincess
New Member
Here's my primary reference picture for Megara from Disney's Hercules animation. My goal was to stay as true to the character illustration as possible while introducing notes of realism both with construction and material choice. Meg as she might be in a live action film, if you will.
In order to boost character recognition and to indulge my love of plushies, I drafted a pattern for a custom sleeping Baby Pegasus doll. You can see the beginnings of my pattern shape plotting on my inspiration picture.
Here's Pegasus as he starts to take shape- He's jointed and fully poseable, really fat and he snores just like in the movie thanks to a little sound recorder and my niece and nephew providing sound effects. I used Worblas Finest thermoplastic to make the hooves, off white 'cuddle fur' for the body and turquoise shag fur for mane and tail. Oh and large covered buttons with fake eyelashes for the eyes as well as some thread sculpting to give him nostrils.
To achieve Megara's dress I had to stop muttering about garments drawn by people who have clearly never sewn in their entire life. Lol, a historically accurate chiton is a draped garment that relies on belts or sashes to be pulled in. Meg's tiny wasp-waist wouldn't show in her dress as it's drawn. It would need a sash tied around her natural waist. Also, that sash going around the rib cage has no tie and no means of defying gravity and the waist sash should have the tie on the skinny side, not the wide side. Ok, maybe I'm not quite done ranting. In order to achieve this look, I bought a cheap underbust corset, took in the sides so that it gave the right silhouette and then covered it with the same fabric used for the dress. Iridescent rayon/polyester fabric of cross-woven turquoise and fuchsia fabric seemed both more magical and somewhat historically plausible- not the fiber type obviously but the cross-weaving to create iridescence. Aaaanyway, now the dress would come in without the use of princess seams or darts and the sashes would have something to support them. I made her fibulae (pins) with a sandwich of Worbla's Finest thermoplastic and gold painted black craft foam with a safety pin secured to the back with more Worblas.
For the makeup it was necessary to mask out my own eyebrows and redraw them. I watched a few drag queen tutorials on YouTube and learned that water soluble glue stick layered with powder works better than scar wax. It also looks freakish when you go to take it off (noted for future rot makeup...). I used Elmer's purple glue stick layered with rice powder in about 10 layers (no joke) and then put Ben Nye creme makeup over all. Lips are done with Senegence Curant LipSense with an exaggerated shape. I think I have about 5 shades of eye shadow on from Urban Decay. Don't forget to set your creme makeup with powder!
For the hair, I portioned out the front piece and Dutch braided from the nape of my neck to the crown of my hair with the rest and put it in a pony tail and curled the ends. For the front piece, I used Suavecita pomade and did some teasing and pincurls sort of like with a pompador. I use a big clip in pony tail clipped to the braided hair with the curled pony of my hair over the top to help the colors blend. For her hair ornament, I used a gold metal cuff bracelet.Foowear isn't visible in most of these photos but I wore Hermes dance sandals.Here I am pictured with some famous sisters I ran into while out getting a bite at the local Greek restaurant
