Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Superhero Costume & Logo

     














Creating the superhero persona involved a complete different identity to the geek we've already portrayed our character as. Our reasoning for this is that the stereotype superhero e.g. Batman, Spiderman like to keep there normal identity hidden from the world. We plan to show a complete separation from our characters ordinary mundane life to her superhero representation, and we are going to show this through contrast of costume.
Iconic superhero figures
Our geek costume
Researching superheroes I came across several items within the costume which regularly appeared:
-Cape
-Mask
-Full body Lycra suit
-Logo
-High boots
-(Mainly) Bright colours

-Belt

       These necessary costume items all represent a hidden identity with an authoritative persona as you can see by the image above,all of which are wearing the necessary items to portray a stereotype superhero. (This image is part of my research from the most iconic superhero characters that have been around since the 70's).
     
The first task I undertook was looking into superhero logos and what is necessary to create a successful logo. I took into consideration the different colours; basic shapes; more detailed images; words and letters which are used to represent the name of the superhero. I learnt from this that the most successful logos contain bold relevant colours and lettering which is all relevant to said character.
Our superheroes name: Topaz Spectre
As we've already established Topaz is the colour yellow so it only seemed obvious to include yellow as one of the main colours, it also fits the criteria perfectly as a bright bold colour. To make the logo better it would involve two colours so looking at the colour wheel it states that the best contrasting colours that will work fantastically next to one another are red, blue and purple. Our final decision was blue to match our original colour scheme for her geek character. This keeps a strong connection between the two identities the character owns.
I then took on responsibility of drawing up some mock logos.

We decided on the logo which our focus group gave us the best response for.
(INSERT BAR GRAPH)

Mel and I both agreed that this was the logo with the best fit to our criteria:
-Bold colours -blue & yellow (Topaz)
-Simple shapes -Star representing what we feel to be, powerful, positive
-Lettering-T represent the characer 'Topaz' Spectre.


Foundation of the cape beinf taped together
Detail added to the mask
     Next came the easy part ... designing the costume. Sticking with our already chosen colour scheme we chose the suitable superhero costume components and figured out what was next on out agenda - The cape. We took it upon our self to make a cape out of materials we had laying around
- White sheet.  White symbolises a positive good natured superhero.
Detail being added to the cape
      Materials needed to make the cape: White material; blue and yellow acrylic paints; double sided sellotape, permanent marker and scissors. Obviously staying within the colour we included a border around the edge of the cape improvising with alternate stripes of colour, then inserted the logo in an " ....cm"-!....cm" scale into the centre of the cape and outlined the entire work with black permanent pen to neaten around the edges and also including quite a nice stereotypical pop art/comic book look to the costume which fits perfectly with our theme. I also made some adjustments to the blue mask we bought for the costume adding yellow dots and a nice poterised line around the bottom supporting the cartoon/comic book aspect to superheros and backing up the colour scheme.
      We completed the costume with electric blue leggings; luminous yellow top; knee length socks in the appropriate colouring (We did have a pair of blue and yellow welly boots which would have worked for the costume, unfortunately Bella's feet were a size to big) and lastly the obvious blue male boxers over the top for the classic superhero feature. We topped the costume off with some finishing touches including electric blue eyeshadow, bright lips and straight hair in a high ponytail centred right on top of the head. This shows the contrast in hidden identity well, as a superhero figure she's disguised behind neat, prim and proper look which is well cared for unlike her geek self.

Front of Super hero costume
Back of Super hero costume

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