June Hudson's Alt. Designs for Eight, Six, & Romana II
Following on from the previous Post. Piers Britton has been kind enough to share some insight into how June Hudson works as well as many of her alt. costume design sketches for The 8th Doctor, The 6th Doctor, Romana II, Sam and Fitz.
He keeps in close contact with June and if anyone wishes to relay any questions to her regarding her work on Dr. Who you can ask him on the original thread here: http://gallifreybase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25228 or just PM me and I can relay them to him. FYI June was the costume designer on The Ribos Operation, Destiny of the Daleks, Creature From the Pit, The Horns of Nimon, The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Warrior's Gate and Logopolis.
I've re-posted his comments and sketches here with Piers' permission.
Anyway here's the designs and background info
"I've posted in this section of the forum a couple of times now about the Doctor Who work of the remarkable June Hudson, with whom it has been my pleasure and privilege to work as co-teacher for a number of years. It occurred to me that regular users might be interested to see some of the Who-related work she's done in connection with our course.
The class we were invited to teach at my institution, the University of Redlands, is Designing for Science Fiction Television. It has come to be known among students as "the Doctor Who course," because we always use a Doctor Who story as the basis for student work. Ever since the first year (when we used "Shada"), we've used specially constructed screenplays based on entries from the BBC's Eighth Doctor Adventure novels - largely because we didn't want students to be influenced by the new series.
June always insists on two things: first, students have to design for an imaginary cast of real actors, because she points out that costume designers should always design with specific bodies in mind; and second, everything the students are asked to do she must herself do alongside them. So the class has generated quite a portfolio of new Who designs from June. As there are no copyright complications, I'm going to add some of them here over the next few weeks -- at least if there is interest.
One of the challenges we ask students to face is adjusting the Doctor's "look" in a respectful manner -- because June has substantial expertise to bring to bear on this. She was very reluctant to alter Tom Baker's costume when asked to do so in 1980, and so tried to create an "apotheosis" of his image which was still in keeping with the producer's wishes in terms of devising something which could easily be branded. As Paul McGann, unlike Tom Baker, was famously not happy with the grooming and costume imposed on him for the film, there is arguably greater latitude for a redesign, and some of June's designs for the Eighth Doctor have departed strongly from the original, though some were also logical extensions of the original image from the TVM.
Here are her designs for McGann for "The Scarlet Empress" and "The Blue Angel."
My favourites among June's designs for Paul McGann are those she did when we taught around "Shada," where the brief for students (and thus the self-imposed brief for June) was to come up with something completely new that met McGann's expressed preference for something "sharper" and "less flowing" than what he wore in the 96 TVM. It was a magical process for me watching June develop her idea throughout a number of sketches until she had got to where she wanted to be. It was months after the design was done that I found convention photos on the internet showing McGann wearing a startlingly similar outfit.
The final design is notable both for its austerity, and for its unusual touches. For example, the jacket superficially looks quite conventional until one sees that the collar, which is stepped at the gorge almost like a peak lapel, turns into a hood behind. The overcoat, too, has a hood -- and an exceptionally low notch in the very narrow lapels. June liked the idea of a slightly monkish quality to the costume, picking up on McGann's rather elongated, 'medieval' physiognomy.
I'm attaching the conceptual drawings in the order in which they were made.
One of the other pleasures of "Shada" was having June return to the character of Romana, whom she virtually invented in sartorial terms, designing Mary Tamm's first costume and a significant number for Lalla Ward, including her first and last. In our imaginary cast, we envisaged Zooey Deschanel in the role. Here again, June took a while to find what she wanted. What was remarkable about this process was the rapidity with which, after what June herself considered false starts, she ultimately found a solution to the challenge of designing for a new version of the character.
June was not happy with her first three attempts at devising a costume for the new Romana to wear for her visit to 1979 Cambridge. She felt that the first two seen here were too close to the kind of thing she did for Lalla Ward and not evocative enough of the new incarnation, and further, (remorselessly self-critical as she is) that the third one was stilted and "boring." So for several days she spent time outside class watching and rewatching Deschanel's performance in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, trying to get under the actress's skin. Something clearly fructified while she was immersing herself in this way. June came back from a class trip to Michael Levine's, the big fabric store in LA's Garment District, having got among many other things a swatch of a voided velvet fabric with informally arranged 'target' designs on it. She did not have a use in mind for this as we drove back. I left her at her apartment at lunchtime and returned less than an hour later to find that it had inspired her to come up with a completely new design for Romana in a drawing which she'd produced with remarkable speed and fluency. And what a design it is.
Oddly June has come up with two designs for Colin Baker's Doctor! One was the response to a challenge from a fan, the other was part of a warm-up exercise for our course in 2008, mostly to demonstrate technique and figure drawing.
The first one is meant to retain the spirit of the orignal while getting away a bit from the frock coat cliché. The second, made partly in response to comments from C. Baker himself (he told us he would have liked to have worn black), is a vision of a post Trial, 'ruminative' Doctor, who has, so to speak, put aside childish things -- the more gloomy Doctor we meet at the beginning of "The Wormery."
June's comments about the original costume are (a) that the designer should not have been put under pressure from the producer, but left alone to work with the actor as he tried to build his character, and (b) that, having interfered in the design process, JNT should have stumped up for better making: superior cutting would in June's view have made the costume stronger.
When we made our adaptation of "The Blue Angel" in 2007, the year after working on "Shada," we decided to interpolate Romana in place of Compassion, the Doctor's female companion in the book. Some students were repeating the course, and we wanted them to work with a real-life challenge, peculiar to the television series as a dramatic form: learning to work with an established aesthetic rather than developing something new. So the Deschanel Romana returned, with June's design for "Shada" serving as a point of departure for all student work. June's own design for the character in "Blue Angel" was deceptively simple -- not as flamboyant as the original. Such designs tend to be overshadowed by the spiffy ones, but June will tell you that these are the most challenging, a fact publicly recognized by the distinguished BBC director James Cellan Jones, who once averred that designing a contemporary show was the best test of a designer's mettle, just because there's no exotica to hide behind.
This point can be even better demonstrated in relation to the Doctor's male companion Fitz, for whom June created one of my very favourite among all her designs. June often says that fabrics will suggest images to you, and that it may well prove more fruitful to look around for materials first than to make a design and then spend weeks trying to hunt down something that approximates what you've drawn. The drawing for Fitz was a case in point.
At Michael Levine's (again), after two hours of shopping, June was rummaging in a remainder bin and came across a generous piece of stretch fabric with a pattern which suggested partially erased graffiti. She knew instantly that this was what she wanted for Fitz's T-shirt. When I asked her why, she said that it instinctively felt right, and later elaborated by saying that it must be because Fitz is so connected to the written word in "The Blue Angel": in one of the dual strands of the story, he essentially sits round for most of the novel reading faerie stories. June liked the idea that this bibliophile tendency "rubbed off" on his clothing.
Fitz's pants, too, which might seem inconsequential at first glance, were meant to be subtly evocative. It was decided that he should wear cargo pants, which were slightly 'naff' in 2007 (our students were appalled at the idea of putting the young male lead into such leg-wear), but suggested his inattention to dress, and his lack of real understanding of contemporary fashion -- Fitz, after all, comes from 1963. His 'home date,' so to speak, also dictated the shape of the pants: June made them distinctive by being not baggy but close-fitting and tapered, quietly redolent of the fashions of the early 1960s.
You'll notice that June frequently omits feet in her drawings, unless the character's shoes are in some way distinctive. What I love about this drawing is that June has included Fitz's bare feet, because they are, in effect, part of the costume. They suggest someone whose days will be filled snuggling up in a squashy chair near the electric fire with a packet of Camels and a good book. A delicious touch."
Enjoy!
-Honorarydoctor
He keeps in close contact with June and if anyone wishes to relay any questions to her regarding her work on Dr. Who you can ask him on the original thread here: http://gallifreybase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25228 or just PM me and I can relay them to him. FYI June was the costume designer on The Ribos Operation, Destiny of the Daleks, Creature From the Pit, The Horns of Nimon, The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Warrior's Gate and Logopolis.
I've re-posted his comments and sketches here with Piers' permission.
Anyway here's the designs and background info
"I've posted in this section of the forum a couple of times now about the Doctor Who work of the remarkable June Hudson, with whom it has been my pleasure and privilege to work as co-teacher for a number of years. It occurred to me that regular users might be interested to see some of the Who-related work she's done in connection with our course.
The class we were invited to teach at my institution, the University of Redlands, is Designing for Science Fiction Television. It has come to be known among students as "the Doctor Who course," because we always use a Doctor Who story as the basis for student work. Ever since the first year (when we used "Shada"), we've used specially constructed screenplays based on entries from the BBC's Eighth Doctor Adventure novels - largely because we didn't want students to be influenced by the new series.
June always insists on two things: first, students have to design for an imaginary cast of real actors, because she points out that costume designers should always design with specific bodies in mind; and second, everything the students are asked to do she must herself do alongside them. So the class has generated quite a portfolio of new Who designs from June. As there are no copyright complications, I'm going to add some of them here over the next few weeks -- at least if there is interest.
One of the challenges we ask students to face is adjusting the Doctor's "look" in a respectful manner -- because June has substantial expertise to bring to bear on this. She was very reluctant to alter Tom Baker's costume when asked to do so in 1980, and so tried to create an "apotheosis" of his image which was still in keeping with the producer's wishes in terms of devising something which could easily be branded. As Paul McGann, unlike Tom Baker, was famously not happy with the grooming and costume imposed on him for the film, there is arguably greater latitude for a redesign, and some of June's designs for the Eighth Doctor have departed strongly from the original, though some were also logical extensions of the original image from the TVM.
Here are her designs for McGann for "The Scarlet Empress" and "The Blue Angel."
My favourites among June's designs for Paul McGann are those she did when we taught around "Shada," where the brief for students (and thus the self-imposed brief for June) was to come up with something completely new that met McGann's expressed preference for something "sharper" and "less flowing" than what he wore in the 96 TVM. It was a magical process for me watching June develop her idea throughout a number of sketches until she had got to where she wanted to be. It was months after the design was done that I found convention photos on the internet showing McGann wearing a startlingly similar outfit.
The final design is notable both for its austerity, and for its unusual touches. For example, the jacket superficially looks quite conventional until one sees that the collar, which is stepped at the gorge almost like a peak lapel, turns into a hood behind. The overcoat, too, has a hood -- and an exceptionally low notch in the very narrow lapels. June liked the idea of a slightly monkish quality to the costume, picking up on McGann's rather elongated, 'medieval' physiognomy.
I'm attaching the conceptual drawings in the order in which they were made.
One of the other pleasures of "Shada" was having June return to the character of Romana, whom she virtually invented in sartorial terms, designing Mary Tamm's first costume and a significant number for Lalla Ward, including her first and last. In our imaginary cast, we envisaged Zooey Deschanel in the role. Here again, June took a while to find what she wanted. What was remarkable about this process was the rapidity with which, after what June herself considered false starts, she ultimately found a solution to the challenge of designing for a new version of the character.
June was not happy with her first three attempts at devising a costume for the new Romana to wear for her visit to 1979 Cambridge. She felt that the first two seen here were too close to the kind of thing she did for Lalla Ward and not evocative enough of the new incarnation, and further, (remorselessly self-critical as she is) that the third one was stilted and "boring." So for several days she spent time outside class watching and rewatching Deschanel's performance in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, trying to get under the actress's skin. Something clearly fructified while she was immersing herself in this way. June came back from a class trip to Michael Levine's, the big fabric store in LA's Garment District, having got among many other things a swatch of a voided velvet fabric with informally arranged 'target' designs on it. She did not have a use in mind for this as we drove back. I left her at her apartment at lunchtime and returned less than an hour later to find that it had inspired her to come up with a completely new design for Romana in a drawing which she'd produced with remarkable speed and fluency. And what a design it is.
Oddly June has come up with two designs for Colin Baker's Doctor! One was the response to a challenge from a fan, the other was part of a warm-up exercise for our course in 2008, mostly to demonstrate technique and figure drawing.
The first one is meant to retain the spirit of the orignal while getting away a bit from the frock coat cliché. The second, made partly in response to comments from C. Baker himself (he told us he would have liked to have worn black), is a vision of a post Trial, 'ruminative' Doctor, who has, so to speak, put aside childish things -- the more gloomy Doctor we meet at the beginning of "The Wormery."
June's comments about the original costume are (a) that the designer should not have been put under pressure from the producer, but left alone to work with the actor as he tried to build his character, and (b) that, having interfered in the design process, JNT should have stumped up for better making: superior cutting would in June's view have made the costume stronger.
When we made our adaptation of "The Blue Angel" in 2007, the year after working on "Shada," we decided to interpolate Romana in place of Compassion, the Doctor's female companion in the book. Some students were repeating the course, and we wanted them to work with a real-life challenge, peculiar to the television series as a dramatic form: learning to work with an established aesthetic rather than developing something new. So the Deschanel Romana returned, with June's design for "Shada" serving as a point of departure for all student work. June's own design for the character in "Blue Angel" was deceptively simple -- not as flamboyant as the original. Such designs tend to be overshadowed by the spiffy ones, but June will tell you that these are the most challenging, a fact publicly recognized by the distinguished BBC director James Cellan Jones, who once averred that designing a contemporary show was the best test of a designer's mettle, just because there's no exotica to hide behind.
This point can be even better demonstrated in relation to the Doctor's male companion Fitz, for whom June created one of my very favourite among all her designs. June often says that fabrics will suggest images to you, and that it may well prove more fruitful to look around for materials first than to make a design and then spend weeks trying to hunt down something that approximates what you've drawn. The drawing for Fitz was a case in point.
At Michael Levine's (again), after two hours of shopping, June was rummaging in a remainder bin and came across a generous piece of stretch fabric with a pattern which suggested partially erased graffiti. She knew instantly that this was what she wanted for Fitz's T-shirt. When I asked her why, she said that it instinctively felt right, and later elaborated by saying that it must be because Fitz is so connected to the written word in "The Blue Angel": in one of the dual strands of the story, he essentially sits round for most of the novel reading faerie stories. June liked the idea that this bibliophile tendency "rubbed off" on his clothing.
Fitz's pants, too, which might seem inconsequential at first glance, were meant to be subtly evocative. It was decided that he should wear cargo pants, which were slightly 'naff' in 2007 (our students were appalled at the idea of putting the young male lead into such leg-wear), but suggested his inattention to dress, and his lack of real understanding of contemporary fashion -- Fitz, after all, comes from 1963. His 'home date,' so to speak, also dictated the shape of the pants: June made them distinctive by being not baggy but close-fitting and tapered, quietly redolent of the fashions of the early 1960s.
You'll notice that June frequently omits feet in her drawings, unless the character's shoes are in some way distinctive. What I love about this drawing is that June has included Fitz's bare feet, because they are, in effect, part of the costume. They suggest someone whose days will be filled snuggling up in a squashy chair near the electric fire with a packet of Camels and a good book. A delicious touch."
Enjoy!
-Honorarydoctor