Costumes
The Throbbits
It was the lush rolling hills of Hobbiton that gave us the inspiration to make our Throbbiton a massive golf course. With that in mind, we looked through pictures of old time golfers at the turn of the century. Instead of large, naked, hairy feet, we went with Argyle socks and gigantic golf spats.
For Frudo we definitely wanted him to look spittingly like Frodo, and luckily our lead actor Bryce Cone bears a good resemblance to Elijah Wood, big blue eyes and all. So we gave him a very curly wig (one recommended on a LOTR costume site) and voila! His was the first costume Tim designed for the film with a few trips to Good Will. We were very pleased with the plaid brown coat which looked great and fit perfectly.
With Ham's reddish wig, we wanted a definite rosy-cheeked Irish feel to him. Actor James Flannery even has quite an Irish name to him and he pulled off the look very well. So we picked up a traditional-looking Scottish cap and designed his costume with browns, reds and yellows. Finding a coat in the actor's size at Good Will was a challenge and we settled on a coat we already had in our costume collection, complete with elbow patches.
The Elfises
An obvious play on Elf and Elvis, the Elfises were designed to be a recognizable hybrid of both idea. They needed glitz and a real Vegas feel yet needed to have a very streamlined elf sensibility about them.
Tim whipped up a sketch for Legoblocks based off pictures of The King and Orlando Bloom as Legolas. Through a LOTR Yahoo costume forum he found several designers and costume builders, one of who was Cassie Jo Buss who built Legoblock's tunic. Since Cassie lived out of town, Trisha and Tim fitted the actor Shayne Golden and built his boots and cape. Unfortunately Tim cut the tunic a wee bit too short in front so poor Shayne was constantly trying to hide his package wrapped in white tights throughout the film.
Designer Cassie Jo built Femowen's dress which, to our amazement, fit perfectly. Since it was built without a single fitting and only through e-mail giving measurements, we were sure when actress Victoria Floro tried it on the day before her shoot (she came in from Chicago) we'd be doomed. But it fit like a glove. And even as a bonus, we found a beautiful blood red cloak at Fun F/X to go with it, which Victoria even sprung for if she could keep it.
The Dweebs
The idea was to make the Dweebs dwarven computer geeks since they are socially inept and live underground, in their parents' basements to be exact.
Tim made a Gimpi sketch, and so did another designer he met online who was building the costume. Unfortunately, the costume arrived in the mail several days AFTER Gimpi's scenes were film. Yeah…. so that meant Tim was building it the night before, running to Joann Fabrics and sewing and gluing floppy disks to the tunic. The wig we used was one used before in our sitcom "Nobody's Listening" in an episode where Tim played "Weird Al" Yankovic. The beard came from Fun F/X and Sean had his own moustache that we darkended to match.
The Wizard
We wanted to create a real hobo kind of feel to Randolf and stay with the grey look of the original Gandolf. We were so lucky to meet Janice Bennet online who is a LOTR freak who designs and builds phenomenal costumes. Randolf is a central character and needed extra special care so Janice really took hold and did an awesome job.
She did three costumes for Randolf: the Grey, the White, and the Hawaiian.
For Randolf the Grey she came up with several designs after Tim send her a few concept sketches of his own. She lived in Indy and was close enough to do several fittings with David Kiefer and she even worked on it at a promotional booth we set up at South Bend's Summer in the City in June 2003. The hat was the most complex, but it was well worth it.
The Nosedrool
Tim and James created the original designs and mock-up for the noses, making the first rough versions from newspapers coated in buttermilk pancake mix. Ian went from there carving new versions from foam, coating them in latex followed by airbrushing.
Sweetandsourman & Assistants
Tim drew the concept sketch and Ian filled in the color at an art meeting, staying aware that we couldn't include green in the costume because of the green screen. So we decided on black, white, red and a somewhat greenish gold. Tara took the design and then created an outstanding costume. She also created the look for Sweetandsourman's three assistants and Trisha created her own chicken bucket lampshade hat costume for the waitress she was playing.
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