Giovanni: Day 1

I've ranted at length on Facebook and LJ about the newest project but it's time to get the show on the road.

Let me introduce you to Giovanni Auditore from Assassin's Creed II. When costuming ACII stuff, most people chose Ezio but after seeing the Lineage films and losing some sleep due to the sheer awesomeness of Giovanni, I knew he was going to be my main project for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2011.

Raided Fabricland on Christmas Eve and came up with the following (the colours look infinitely better IRL):

Today, I started the muslin mock-up for his doublet and - by sheer luck - managed to design the shirt pattern as well. I hate collars with a passion and the prospect of his lapels had me pretty freaked out until I laid my basic doublet pattern over top of my 1810s tailcoat and eyeballed how they might go. The initial attempt looked like this after I cut them down a bit.

Right off the bat, that's pretty much how how his shirt looks so I marked out the doublet lapels with red pencil. Then it was a matter of draping another scrap piece over that area and tracing out the proper shape as such. When I recut the muslin, I simply cut the first crappy lapel off and added this.













The final product is on the right there. I tucked the shirt pattern inside so I could see how the collar would overlap the doublet lapels. It's not too obvious but I knew I had it when I compared it with the image at the top of this entry.

Make-upwise, I whipped out the rigid collodion this morning and drew a nice, curvy scar on the left side of my face à la Romano Orzari:

His, unfortunately, is natural (I would love to know how he got it...) but the collodion produced something vaguely similar by drying and contracting the skin. But it has to be used in small, specific quantities, otherwise it looks a little like... your nose dripped on your cheek and it dried there. Hot.




From Here: Test out the red hair tint tonight. Finalize the muslin mock-up this week. More details on the shirt in the next post. I am STOKED, dudes! Have a picture of my stupid cat in celebration of today's success: