Initial Ideas on Costumes

Well, it looks like our friends from the Corrupt Kingdom have been paying visits here :D I bid you all a very warm thank you and hope that you will -- from time to time -- visit again. Please share your thoughts with us the next time you drop by!

Now, on with today's matters. On this fine day I wish to relate on the initial ideas for the costumes that were worn in Anike. The designs owe a lot to Nusantaran (i.e. South East Asian) cultures, namely Malay, Javanese, Balinese, and Thai. Not to mention some Indian and European influence as well. When Himanshu told me that he needed a "generic" South East Asian culture, I had no choice but to invent one...

But how to invent an entire culture in just a couple of days? Himanshu was lucky because I was already working on a fantasy culture loosely based on the Malay and other South East Asian cultures for my Rian and Artiera fantasy art projects. I had already conducted a somewhat thorough research on the subject and was familiar with the various designs. This gave me a tremendous edge on the time it required to complete the costume design. It helped that Maiza was also familiar with the world of Rian and Artiera, making it easier for her to help me fabricate the required parts for the costumes. She even had some ideas of her own on how the parts were to look like and how they were to be made!

Shown above and below are artworks from whence the ideas for Anike's costumes came. The first (top) is a depiction of Artiera Narazura (Tiera), from my latest art project. Please note her headband, gauntlets/bracers, belt, pending (buckle), sampin (waistcloth), pants and the ivory dagger (badik). These are the very same designs that I based Anike's costume on. I only needed to change the design for her top and the colour of the outfit.

This one is a scene from "The Maritulu Chronicles", an ongoing fantasy adventure project available at my Elfwood page. It shows the duel between Daena (standing, with twin swords on hand) and the main character Rian (holding the same ivory dagger that Tiera had -- Tiera was her ancestor and the dagger is an heirloom!). It was from images such as these -- and more in my mind and skecthbooks -- that the costume ideas for the play came forth.

As a general rule, the colour yellow (and gold for that matter) was reserved for members of the royal house. Being bethrothed to Prince Nadim, I had taken liberties to allow some gold -- but not yellow -- on Anike's costume. From the onset, Anike was viewed as "fire" while Yasmine, the younger sister, was "water". I did not mean to take the literal approach, but I felt that the colours red and blue were suited to the actors who played these characters -- May (Anike) and Jin-jin (Yasmine).

The king, Maniaka (played by the awe-inspiring Mr Jayaram) had an all-yellow outfit and some armour. The armour is a European influence - ancient SE Asian kingdoms seldom had any form of metal body armour. I've decided on a minimalist approach for the armour, taking the ideas from Makyong and Menora costumes. The armour gave the character a fearsome aura, a sense of majesty and fear (while at the same time providing an "insecure little man" with some measure of protection).

As I were to find out later, drawing and painting an alternate world was not as easy as creating one in the flesh! We spent hundreds of man hours in our little "studio" at our house (the temperature in the studio could have given global warming a shame!). There were times that we not only burned the midnight oil, but it was well into the morning oil as well! All the while, we had to coordinate things with the tailor whom we've engaged to sew the clothes. But that's another post! Hehehe...

I shall narrate more on the other characters and the concepts behind their costumes in later posts... Until then...