The Armoury and Creature Shop

..At Camp Silver Beach Summer 2010

It works like this:

1) Ross Barnes has a vision of the most amazing Evening Programme (basically evening game/activity for the kids) ever at Camp Silver Beach.

2) We both work on the principle of if you're going to do a thing you might as well do it properly.

3) Most of our evenings and weekends (in fact pretty much all) are spent in making costumes for one night. (Well two nights really, because we had a Harry Potter EP which is what the Dementors were for, and then the medieval fantasy EP which is what all the armour and stuff was for...)

Enjoy.

Dementor Masks for the Harry Potter EP:

The Dementors are described in the books as being clammy things made of rotting flesh and not really having a face - although a mouth is needed to suck out a person's soul. So the vision I had in my head started from the mouth and worked backwards.
These masks are made by first covering a load of balloons in papier mache, using tissue instead of newspaper to achieve the wrinkled, rotting skin effect. The balloons deflated slightly in the drying process, which actually added to the effect. I had to put eyes in so that the person wearing them could see, but I used gauze so that once they were painted they would be as invisible as possible. I then used lumps of glue-soaked tissue to build the features of the face, starting with the round area for the mouth and working backwards with cheekbones etc.
I finally used my drybrushing method of painting them to enhance the wrinkled texture, and varnished them to make them look wet and clammy. I also made hooded cloaks from black sheets, and made them tatty, and dragged them through dust outside to weather them.

Here are the different variety of hats we made!

To paint them up we mostly used spray paint and then I dry-brushed with a darker colour and used a cloth to rub the paint off in order to get that tarnished metal feel.

The helmets, swords, and shields for the Templar Knights - there were four in total.

They also wore 'chainmail' (large knitted jumpers spray painted silver) and white tabards with the red cross on the front.

Ross's own special helmet!

The "Claymore" - A 5ft Broadsword

I used string wound around the handle for added realism, and gems for decoration. The spray paint on slightly wet glue produced an interesting 'patination' effect.

The Dark knight's helmets and Shields - there were four in total. They also wore dark cloaks.

We realised at the very last minute that we needed a crown - I didn't have time to make a real looking one so I made a fairy-tale one - It was only seen from quite far away anyway.

A small dagger made for one of the characters:

A piece of armour made for the character of the 'Golden Angel' - the costume also included gold shin pads, gold arm pads, and a gold jewelled leather-effect 'skirt' made from pointed strips of foam-board bent to make them more flexible and stapled to a fabric belt.

My costume for the EP - made even more at the last minute than the crown (literally about 5 minutes before we started!) It consisted of a large beige sheet with a hole in the middle for my head, a piece of white sheet made tatty with scissors and dragged through mud and dust, a piece of white sheet for the bandage around my eyes, a stick with some rags tied to it, and lots of white and black face paint.

My CV

Catie Atkinson CV

A look back...

Foundation Art

Here's just a quick look back at the work I did in my BTEC Diploma Foundation Art way back in 2006...

These assemblage pieces marked a turning point in my work, where I went from being interested in art, painting pretty pictures and taking pretty photographs, to actually making something of substance. It's also where I started to use a lot of the techniques that I would eventually carry across to the world of theatre and props. It's also the year that I first branched out into film and sound installation (see below), so a lot of changes there!

"One of These Days..." - My first assemblage piece.

A treasure chest full of objects - each had a specific meaning.

I made the treasure chest from scratch out of an old shoebox, lots of cardboard, papier mache, paint and varnish, and lined the inside with fabric. It even has a secret compartment in the lid!

The Big Bad Wolf - part of the installation of the same name in my final Foundation Year show. The sound has actually been added to this video later - it originally was separate, coming out of the earpiece of the telephone in the installation. The installation consisted of three large assemblage panels attached to the walls - two were made to look like the inside of 'Granny's cottage', the other consisted of the harrowing view of a soiled red hoodie tangled in the branches of some tree. There was also a small cabinet within the space on top of which was the phone with the sound installation, and nearby a small window with a screen on the other side showing the video.

Some close-ups of the assemblage panels.

The phone emitting the sound installation - people would pick up the receiver and listen whilst watching the film which was on a screen nearby.

Theatre Work - Relative Values

Noel Coward's Relative Values

TTC - Hampton Hill Playhouse

July 2009

The set in this play consisted of a library in a large house and the design was naturalistic. I was asked to help create the bookcases by painting up ready-made vacuum formed shelves of books (just the bookends really!) to look like real books so that they could be put into a framework for the bookshelves which lined the room.

As there were a lot of bookshelves to do and limited time, I worked light over dark using the dry-brushing technique which is both effective and efficient for time. I then used a small brush with metallic enamels and paints to bring out some of the details such as titles and bands on the spines.

I had fun adding little details that no-one in the audience would notice...

"The Bumper Book of Fun by C.M. Atkinson Vol's XXIV-XXVIII"

"A History of Madness by R.U. Nutts"

"Painting by C. Atkinson" (really just the equivalent of a cheeky signature here!)

Anyway here are some pictures of the final bookshelves in their entirety - Alan Corbett - the guy who built the framework - cleverly made them so that they fold up with the books on the inside, as the theatre were so impressed with them that they wanted to keep them for future productions and/or to hire them out to other theatre groups! The Bookshelves were used again in the TTC production of James McDonald's Something's Afoot, February 2010.

The bookshelf wall also included a secret door which was to be an entrance or exit in one of the scenes.

Heracles - A Close Look

One of the Hydra heads - mouth open

Mouth Closed

A glowing eye:- LEDs behind tissue paper

Inside the Hydra head - you can see it's constructed from newspaper Papier Mache on chicken-wire - also visible are the wires and battery pack for the LED eyes.

Cheron's hand - constructed on a latex glove using Halloween joke witches fingers, chicken-wire, tissue paper, glue, and painted to look like flaking skin on bone.

Cerberus masks/hats - constructed onto adjustable safety helmets to fit onto actors' heads using chicken-wire, black fabric, tissue paper, cardboard, gaffer tape and paint.

QVC

QVC - Christmas Sets
October 2009

During October 2009 I worked for QVC (the Shopping Channel in case you don't know) making all of the Christmas decorations to go into the sets for the Christmas period. Julie Ash, the Production Designer basically showed me some mood boards and some examples of the kind of thing she wanted, and left me in a big room with a huge amount of raw materials to get making!

Some finished Christmas Trees - there were 13 in total.

A 'swag' - to go over the fireplace in the home set - made out of the top halves of two old white Christmas trees with lots of baubles and jintzy bits glued in.

Lots and lots of wrapped presents to go on shelves and in nooks and crannies in the sets. I wrapped them all. I may never wrap another present again...

Baubles - you get a general idea of the colour scheme...

My worktable

The view out of the window from where I was working