Maleficent, Part 1

After having this costume in my "Blue Sky" file for several years now, I've decided to tackle a Maleficent costume. To be specific, I'm talking about the original Mistress of All Evil, taunts the prince with old age, turns into a giant fire-breathing dragon Maleficent. The animated Maleficent, not the Angelina Jolie one.



Compared to some of the projects I've taken on lately, she should be a relatively easy build, but she does present some interesting challenges. My first challenge is her horns.



Look at that magnificence. But I want them to be symmetrical and hollow. I'm going to have to wear this headpiece all day, so I want it to be relatively light weight, which is something my Loki helmet was not. I know I'm not going to be able to sculpt two horns that are the same, and I don't have the resources to cast the horns and helmet. In light of all that, I've decided to use what I know and add in a little experimentation. I'm going to start with a pepakura of Maleficent's head, build it out with clay, then mold thermoplastic over it. The only problem is there are no pepakura files for Maleficent's head.

I had to start one step farther back, and look for a 3D model of her that I could then unfold and build. I found one that I liked https://www.yobi3d.com/#!/search?q=3...j%20maleficent, and began the editing process in Blender. I did away with the staff and Diablo, and set about deleting everything below the base of her neck, effectively turning the full body model in to wig head with horns. I did a little bit of shaping to make the head a little wider since my face is not nearly as thin as the model's. In the end, it looked like this



I went over to Pepakura Designer, and started the unfolding process. It took forever to get the pieces in to a manageable arrangement. I haven't unfolded an object in a long time, and I've never unfolded something as wibbly-wobbly as this, but after lots of connecting and dividing faces to make it printable and at least somewhat manageable to build, it looked something like this



I ended up leaving the little fiddly bits of the eyes, noes and lips off the piece layout, since I don't really need those for the helmet, and they would just take more time to assemble. After I was somewhat happy (or at least I didn't hate the pieces) I took it over to Pepakura reader for Silhouette to print it out. Next session, I'll be cutting and assembling the head.



On the fabric front, I've acquired 10 yards of magenta taffeta for the under dress, so I'm going to start with that while I look for the robe fabric. The under dress is fairly straightforward, since I won't be lining it. I used Butterick's B4377 pattern as my base, and after a couple quick modifications, the pattern was ready.



Depending on how it sews up and how much fabric I have left after cutting, I might add in another set of godets for extra fullness. Or I might go crazy and put some horse hair in the hem. I won't make that decision until I've got it sewn though.