The Trio
Posted on September 18th, 2009 by Jana HutchisonThe beginning of Episode three gave us a wonderful opportunity to introduce three new characters, and also a whole subset of the Night Zero world: the Skullhunters. Except for fragments about the charming Edge, we haven’t quite gotten the whole story on the Skullhunters. So now, meet the trio: West, Axel and Sawtooth. We thought it’d be interesting to discuss the process of how each of the trio wound up with their distinctive look.
These characters allowed for us to really branch out past our born-of-utility drab and dingy color. The skullhunters are personas of their own invention, without societal constraints (think super-villains). The script presented descriptions of the trio, ranging from specific to vague. This was the most premeditated costume design, with a small costuming budget and a long back-and-forth process between myself and Anthony, the director. I did some visual research for my ideas for each character with photographs found online, which allowed us to speak with the same language when discussing ideas, which we had not before. We found that we don’t all use the same words for describing costuming. What comes to mind when I say “suit”? Does that just mean a tie with jacket? Is it a three-piece matching affair, or perhaps a jacket isn’t essential for the “suit” look? Sending off two pictures and saying “more like this one or the other?” helps us narrow down ideas and pick out essential elements.
West was always meant to have a classic cowboy look, and the production team had very specific ideas about this. He was to have a duster-style coat and mismatched pistols. He’d wear the brown leather hat oft sported by the actor that plays West. That left me with finding the jacket (easy… craigslist is often a costumer’s best friend) and the basic underlayers. I’d thought this would be no big deal, but actually finding a traditional cowboy-style shirt (faded plaid, pearl snap buttons, yolk collar accent) was a challenge in the thrift stores of Seattle. After visiting (literally) every Goodwill and Value Village in the city, I found West’s shirt in a retro-clothing shop for $20. At first Anthony was a little dubious of the pale pastels of the plaid, but eventually agreed that it looks great against the dark bulk of his jacket. Pattern of any kind isn’t typically encouraged with this type of photography, so keeping it more subtle was key. Two mismatched pistols were added to our growing armory of prop and airsoft weapons, and we called West good.
Sawtooth was also fairly well-described in the script, however not all of the initial ideas for this character were practical. He was written as a hulking intimidating man (check, our actor is wonderfully imposing) who had, when in prison, filed his own teeth down to points to use as weapons. While that detail was very informative about this guy’s past and his mental status, in practice we couldn’t make it work. We played with ideas ranging from tooth black makeup to a big silver grill, but these were quickly abandoned as unworkable and we moved on to just making Sawtooth big and scary. And a little crazy. Our actor already had the biker aesthetic we wanted, so putting him in black with some chains was easy enough. When shopping for something else in the Army Surplus store, we walked past a display of retro goggles and joked that we should put them on Sawtooth. Up to that point, we were going to try more of an S&M type look with leather bands and collar, etc., but the switch to the completely crazy-person goggles solidified who he was to us. Sometimes ideas thrown out in jest wind up being the best part of a costume. I added some scars and played with facial tattoos on location. What started as the standard “teardrop” prison tatt, became the crazy whirling swirls that ended up in the photos. The teardrop, with the scale of our actor, just looked strange and not at all scary.
Axel was the most nebulous of the three, literally described in the script as “shorter than Sawtooth and either taller or shorter than West”. Not much to go on but, from his dialogue, we realized he was the clown. Once we locked in on this, his character gave me the most leeway and was the most fun to design. After a shortlived idea of a Napoleon Bonaparte-inspired look, I started thinking about Charlie Chaplin and the 1930’s train tramp. Some quick visual research got us to the essentials: bowler hat, fingerless gloves, bow tie and baggy distressed jacket. I got to learn the skill of bow tie floofing, which was a lot harder than I’d imagined, even with the video tutorials found online. The bowler hat was the most essential part, and naturally most expensive, and I think it looks just great. I also wanted to be sure he got the shotgun that looks somewhat like a cane, which our actor wielded beautifully.
Scratcher/Cranson didn’t require a lot of costuming forethought. Our actor for this particular role was a zombie enthusiast we’d met at the Crypticon horror convention the week prior. He was cast on the spot, at our booth, once he showed an interest in performing. His distinct look, bald head and goatee were perfect for a former-Skullhunter-turned-scratcher, so I just asked him to come as he was. I had the amazing canvass of the back of his head to produce one of my most favorite gore effects to date: a gaping gunshot wound. I found this technique by accident, as I’d forgotten to bring along tissue to build up under the latex I usually use for three dimensional effects. I looked at what I had in my kit, and settled on a dried out alcohol pad. I cut a hole in the fibers and secured it with latex and scar wax. It created a wonderful little receptacle for fresh blood and looked thoroughly disgusting.
Designing these character’s looks was a great learning exercise for us. Since then, we’ve been thinking much more critically about what our characters’ appearances says about them and the world in which they live. Look for subtle clues in the costuming and makeup in all of the future frames, there is information there.
Next up? Literally dozens and dozens of scratchers at once. Our next big (and biggest ever) endeavor takes us to the streets and I’ve finally enlisted the help of some wonderfully talented makeup artists. The result is going to be epic and we cannot wait to share it with you.
