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labricoleuseRecall the saga of the lizard skin samples, from two prior posts here and here...but what happened after that?
Those samples were the preliminary experiments on the creation of a man-sized reptile tail for a new translation of Moliere's Imaginary Invalid at PlayMakers Repertory Company of Chapel Hill, NC.
For the first round of fittings with our designer, Sonya Berlovitz, third year graduate Adrienne Corral had created an initial tail mockup for scale and shape, and for skin choices we had all our spandex samples as well as some samples of croc and gator embossed vinyls and leathers.
At this point in the process, what we knew about the tail was that someone would be wearing it during a hallucination scene in which one character goes to hell (though exactly whom was as yet undecided), that this person would be crossing the stage and possibly running or climbing, and the tail's movement needed to be as realistic as possible.
Adrienne making the first tail mockup with a lightweight boning support structure.
The movement issue seemed to be key from a construction standpoint, in terms of what kind of foundation would allow the tail to move sinuously, rather than just being a lolling deadweight. The structure pictured above allowed us to see what this "tapering helix" foundation would do when worn, but was not meant to be the actual materials for the foundation; the nature of that foundation was contingent upon what was used to create the exterior skin as well.
For the skin, Sonya ultimately decided to go with a beautiful leather hide embossed with a hornback alligator pattern. This required a return to the drawing board. Adrienne's tapering helix of lightweight boning might have worked structurally to support a tail made from gicked and blister-scaled spandex, which is a very lightweight and stretchy fabric, but the weight and stability of leather required something sturdier.
Leather hide laid out in the dye shop with Adrienne's first level of the dye/paint process applied.
In order to retain as much sinuosity as possible while supporting the heft of a leather hide, Adrienne and I discussed several other structures as alternatives to the tapering helix. She decided to make a second foundation mockup, this one based on a central "spine" with steel rings for ribs. Adrienne also made this second "skeleton" in such a way that, if it worked, we could use it as the actual foundation and proceed. Because time was of the essence, I went to Home Depot and looked for things which might be good "spines and ribs" for our lizard-man, whom we were now referring to as The Dragon...
At left: 1" diameter aluminum conduit, which is super light, super sturdy, and has a great snakelike movement when wiggled.
(I also bought some thick vinyl tubing as another spine possibility, but we went with this.)
At right: big hose clamps with an adjustable worm gear, which may be easily shaped to a range of circumferences.
Left: hose clamp adjusted to a specific size.
Right: hose clamp with support wires being set into it.
The conduit was threaded down the gap in the middle of the two "Cs" of wire, which got tightened down with zip ties. The wires were installed with synthetic sinew instead of tie-wire to minimize weight. Minimizing weight wherever possible was always at the forefront of this process. To test the sturdiness of our new skeleton, we cut out a first "skin" in tablecloth vinyl of a similar weight to our hide.
Above is a segment of the skeleton with pieces of the hide being progressively attached.
Work calls, and the show opens tomorrow night, so I'm going to leave off there and finish the process in a final post.
Stay tuned!
Those samples were the preliminary experiments on the creation of a man-sized reptile tail for a new translation of Moliere's Imaginary Invalid at PlayMakers Repertory Company of Chapel Hill, NC.
For the first round of fittings with our designer, Sonya Berlovitz, third year graduate Adrienne Corral had created an initial tail mockup for scale and shape, and for skin choices we had all our spandex samples as well as some samples of croc and gator embossed vinyls and leathers.
At this point in the process, what we knew about the tail was that someone would be wearing it during a hallucination scene in which one character goes to hell (though exactly whom was as yet undecided), that this person would be crossing the stage and possibly running or climbing, and the tail's movement needed to be as realistic as possible.
Adrienne making the first tail mockup with a lightweight boning support structure.
The movement issue seemed to be key from a construction standpoint, in terms of what kind of foundation would allow the tail to move sinuously, rather than just being a lolling deadweight. The structure pictured above allowed us to see what this "tapering helix" foundation would do when worn, but was not meant to be the actual materials for the foundation; the nature of that foundation was contingent upon what was used to create the exterior skin as well.
For the skin, Sonya ultimately decided to go with a beautiful leather hide embossed with a hornback alligator pattern. This required a return to the drawing board. Adrienne's tapering helix of lightweight boning might have worked structurally to support a tail made from gicked and blister-scaled spandex, which is a very lightweight and stretchy fabric, but the weight and stability of leather required something sturdier.
Leather hide laid out in the dye shop with Adrienne's first level of the dye/paint process applied.
In order to retain as much sinuosity as possible while supporting the heft of a leather hide, Adrienne and I discussed several other structures as alternatives to the tapering helix. She decided to make a second foundation mockup, this one based on a central "spine" with steel rings for ribs. Adrienne also made this second "skeleton" in such a way that, if it worked, we could use it as the actual foundation and proceed. Because time was of the essence, I went to Home Depot and looked for things which might be good "spines and ribs" for our lizard-man, whom we were now referring to as The Dragon...
At left: 1" diameter aluminum conduit, which is super light, super sturdy, and has a great snakelike movement when wiggled.
(I also bought some thick vinyl tubing as another spine possibility, but we went with this.)
At right: big hose clamps with an adjustable worm gear, which may be easily shaped to a range of circumferences.
Left: hose clamp adjusted to a specific size.
Right: hose clamp with support wires being set into it.
The conduit was threaded down the gap in the middle of the two "Cs" of wire, which got tightened down with zip ties. The wires were installed with synthetic sinew instead of tie-wire to minimize weight. Minimizing weight wherever possible was always at the forefront of this process. To test the sturdiness of our new skeleton, we cut out a first "skin" in tablecloth vinyl of a similar weight to our hide.
Above is a segment of the skeleton with pieces of the hide being progressively attached.
Work calls, and the show opens tomorrow night, so I'm going to leave off there and finish the process in a final post.
Stay tuned!
