The overall costume unit has been different to any set of tasks I've been given before but this doesn't mean it was any lesson challenging, the tasks given such as drawings and drafts of costumes were difficult because I'm not considered as someone who is good at drawing, nevertheless I tried to complete drawn costume designs to the best of my ability.
I had chosen Into the Woods costumes to design over Bugsy Malone as I thought I could explore more with my imagination towards the details of the characters, for example because a few of the characters were animals or things you could find in fairy tales I was able to design much more fun and exaggerated pieces of clothing.
An example of this can be issued in my design of the Wolf as I added things such as a mask, paws to create a more realistic, unique design compared to if I was designing for Bugsy where all the clothes would be similar and not as challenging compared to Into the Woods.
Also unlike Bugsy there are more costume changes which mean we'd have to connect more to the character to understand how the costume would change but not to the extent to where the character is unrecognisable and still keeps their core features. An example of this is the wolf, when this character dresses up as the grandma to fool Red Riding Hood it's core features that keeps it who it is stays on, for example the big belt which symbolises confidence, the black skinny jeans to show the characters slyness and sneakiness and the wolf mask to add a sense of mystery to the character as the audience are unable to see the actors face.
One thing that went well in this project was the research aspect as there is a lot of design examples of the internet as the characters in this play are based around current fairy tales and typical fiction characters such as the Witch. I found many examples of Red Riding hood looking mainly the same in most of the images, so I decided to make her costume relate more to her character as it was different compared to the typical Little Red Riding Hood fairy tales as although she's cute and described as 'innocent' she is also spoilt, bratty at times and considers herself older than she actually is. So to show these features I wanted to have her in a white dress as white has the colour connotations of innocence, but then a red jumper over the top with a hood she has up to begin to show her 'rebellious' adult like side. The red jumper would also be made out of a fine material to give the impression of the spoilt presence of her.
One thing that I could have done better is to add more detail into the design of the baker as although the script says he lives a normal life and is a quite a plain character he is still one of the main roles and needs to have more exclusive features to shows off the parts of his character which make him unique. Such as the way he treats his wife and how the script shows him of being restricting of her and the things she can do, to show this the Baker character could have articles of clothing such to show status and power, to be focused in the performance to his wife, an example of this could be a really big chiefs hat or a big belt/shoes.
A big strength of my project is the fact I managed to make the costumes unique for each character and exclusive to this performance, whether that was expressing their character through specific pieces of clothing, or using colours to exaggerate characters traits and personalities.
A weakness though was the drawing tasks as I found the drawing of the costumes my downfall as I have limited skills in sketching and didn't think my drawings really showed of how I imagined the characters to be.
If I were to do this project again I think I still would've designed costumes for the Wolf and Red Riding Hood but not for the baker as I wasn't able to explore out of the costume contexts set in the script, for example they call him 'The Baker' and describe him as having hunting gear equipped, meaning I wasn't able to use my imagination without going to far away from the facts of what he looks like in the script.
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