03/01/99- (After the motorcycle project, I'm not too enthusiastic about tackling the job of finishing & painting.) The main objective of costuming has been to (again) expose as much skin as possible, and still hide the articulation seams. Otherwise, what's the point? That, and the fact that I wanted something that looked slightly different didn't leave too many possibilities. Having recently acquired a spare "Emperor Palpatine" (Star Wars) figure made the decision pretty easy. Here she is in some tentative stolen costuming. The robe steers this in the direction of a particular genre. I was thinking of something grungy-futuristic instead of medieval, so that she'd fit in with the FAKK-Q figure. The sci-fi/fantasy genre can have medieval things like sorceresses, swords and ornate decorations mixed in with high-tech gadgetry. It's sort of like the universal dumping ground for anachronistic ideas.

03/03/99- Here's how the outfit is mutating. I tried lots of things to zero in on how to detail it. I started doodling with clay, trying organic & thorny designs for the crotchpiece and shinguards. They looked funky. So I hauled out a book on world mythologies and some art books, looking for some decorative flourishes to steal... er...inspire me. I didn't find anything there. The leather sandals actually come more from "Mistress of the Whip" (The Magic Christian): I didn't want to make another pair of thigh-high boots. A "Frederick's of Hollywood" catalog was fun to look at, and I got a lot of the "look" from that. The biggest change was the arm coils-- they instantly defined it as "rockets 'n' rayguns". This is the design-as-you-go method, so few things are permanently assembled or detailed out. I try things out, and if they look good I add more things. If I change my mind about something, it's fairly easy to go back and change it.

03/05/99- Like I said, she's short and the FAKK-Q figure was kinda tall, so it's interesting to see them side-by-side. I guess it takes two to make a "theme"? As I was putting the costuming together, I started thinking about what other characters might populate this world. The nekkid Palpatine figure who donated the robe would make a good mutant goon, with the addition of a lot of putty (they did a lousy job of capturing the Emperor's likeness anyway). His outer robe with the hood looks pretty generic too, so it could serve as the near-complete outfit for an acolyte figure. These would be "furniture" figures-- background characters to define the theme.

I thought this pic looked neat & posted a version of it at the Sandbox. Raquel Welch in "Hamlet 2,000,000 AD"? I've reserved a tiny island of space to use for staging photos, and because of the scale, I'm really limited in what I can do. Soooo... the backdrops & props tend to get overused. I used the normally undesirable light flare deliberately, for variety. I rarely digitally retouch pictures, except to adjust the tint, brightness, contrast & saturation. Here however, I've digitally added the cutouts in her bikini bottom to see what they'd look like before actually clipping real leather. This makes up for the fact that real life doesn't have a "Revert" command. In keeping with the aims of this project, each additional square millimeter of bare flesh counts, as we approach the boundary of (but stay safely outside of) soft-core pornography. (FYI, we missed the turnoff for "Good Taste" somewhere at the beginning of the article.)

This is some of the fun detailing work that's permissible in the "universal dumping ground" genre. Betcha didn't realize that she was a Mall Babe... below: Okay, okay... last shots (for now)! Some quick & easy costuming changes.