Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1514620
32 • THE ARTISAN SPRING 2024 dam, a river of ideas spills forth! At this point, you have to be careful not to leave anything out … wait, let me explain better; what at first glance does not seem so interesting, will later prove to be important. Our empty room now begins to live and become full of pictures. But this is not enough, we need textures and items to always look to for inspiration. I brought with me the most fabulous team to help create the magic. We even had a tiny, tiny kitchen where every day at 1 p.m. sharp, we would take turns to make a family meal on a hotpot to banter and discuss our ideas. We would research each character and was in constant communication not only with the directors, but also Wizards of the Coast, who really expressed the need for each character to have true D&D authenticity. Constant testing and discovery continued throughout filming up until the last day of the shoot. For seven months, the team would alter, change, and modify designs until there was a character worthy of the D&D world. In starting to think about our barbarian characters, our leading barbarian named Holga, was played by Michelle Rodriguez. The barbarians needed tattoos and an arm branding for signifying their specific tribe. In thinking about Holga, I became fascinated with the history of a Siberian Ice Maiden named Princess Ukok. Her body was preserved for 2,500 years in the Altai Mountains. It is believed that Ukok was to have been a great female warrior and part of the ancient nomadic Siberian people, the Pazyryk. They were known for using tattoos to symbolize age, status, and family. I drew a lot of inspiration from this story and the style of tattoos this princess had. We drew Holga's tattoos from this and followed with all the barbarians from there. We created a multitude of tattoos inspired by this ancient style. Michelle's hair stylist, Linda Flowers, created a top hairpiece that covers Michelle's head from temple to temple and used Michelle's own hair on the sides and bottom. With the help of pipe cleaners, hair was braided, knotted, twisted, and Linda used a few dreads to create her style. Holga became a living Princess Ukok, a most strong barbarian. Many of our characters included designs that needed some prosthetic elements to achieve the fantasy, so we had a workshop set up on site to build the custom ears, horns, scars and branding for the various barbarians, Tieflings, elves and dwarfs. David Malinowski headed this workshop and hired sculptors, mold makers, and painters to process all the needs. Sophia Lillis (Doric) and Justice Smith (Simon) wore custom silicone ears. For Doric, a fine lace custom wig was applied and styled after being fitted over a custom carbon cap head-form with small protrusions to magnetically attach her Tiefling horns seamlessly through the wig. Small lace pieces were attached to the horns to fill any gaps. A sheer airbrushed foundation was used to color-correct her skin but allow her natural freckles to show through. I meticulously painted and darkened additional freckles all over her face using a brow pen and the ears were painted to match, including more freckles! There was much back-and-forth to find the right hair and horn style for Doric. Placement and style of the horns really changed the character a lot and we wanted to be sure to keep her full look easily in the camera frame for close-ups. Next, we really worked in finding the right curl style for her hair. Originally, we had a much tighter curl in Justice Smith and crew on the set Rege-Jean Page as Xenk