Asajj Ventress Bad Batch Season 3 Episode 9 "The Harbinger"

[barryhicks]

Soooooo, figured I'd give it a go with trying to make the outfit for Ventress from the Bad Batch episode.  I wanted to do some research first and try out a few things before moving forward with this on here (FE forum) as a thread. I'm going to post things that I have already played around with, along with moving forward for stuff I will be doing in future. 

A thank you to folks who have posted pictures on the Facebook group. It has helped immensely and I will be including some of them in this build. 

Please keep in mind I am having a hard time with getting my phone to take pictures of the colors so I did invest in two Pantone booklets Pantone GP1601B 2022 Edition Coated and Uncoated Guide. I have been making notes of the colors of the fabric to compare to what I have seen on the different screen from the show. I will be pointing them out in the photos so people can check the colors and whatnot. 

I'm currently working on the prints for the tunic and the two outer collars and short sleeves. I worked on the patterns in a program called Creative Space that is used with the xTool Laser machines. They have a silk screen printing machine which "sort of" works with what I am trying to accomplish.  

The fabric for the tunic and the outer collars I am choosing to use Scuba knit fabric. Partly due to it laying down smoothly on a human body, two it has stretch, which shows up on the upper sleeves of the lighter fabric (see following image of upper arm) and it's in tribute to the fact that this episode deals with water and an island (this particular part will continue with some other parts of my build that I will share when I get to them). 



So, I guess I'll start with the pattern for the collars and short sleeves. I looked online and in some of my books to see if I could find a woven pattern that could be bought or even hand woven on a loom  (I have a loom). But there is no actual weave for this pattern. There is something close, but it was definitely different. And physically it wouldn't present itself well for a fabric as it would be too loose of a weave and not look like what is in the cartoon. But this is just my personal judgement call. I have decided to go ahead and make a print of the pattern and silk screen it onto the fabric. My first attempt I felt was too uniform and didn't have the same feel as the cartoon. So I went back and reworked the edges of the lines and reshaped as well as resized the pattern. I worked on the counting of the height of the repeat of the print to the collars and to the cartoons neck and my real neck. I sized the print accordingly to "hopefully" work for myself. I'm still working on alignment for repeating the pattern on fabric, but I have pictures to show what I have so far. 

When I am done with printing it, I will be going back over the fabric with another layer of transparent paint with more of a light coffee stain color to match the color in the show. There are areas around the seams and edges of the collar where the material is lighter, closer to ivory. I am working with the ivory colored fabric to see if I can keep some of that coloring in and around the collars edges. For now I am just working on the printed part. I have been hand mixing my colors. I am using a mixture of Speedball water based inks. 

After making the changes to make the pattern feel more organic












The following section deals with the blue printed fabric on her tunic. Boy this is an oddball fabric but I think I have it pretty much figured out. Though I do have questions about pattern repeats, but I will continue with that at the end of this post. The main part of the issue is finding a way to have the pattern show up in light but not as much in darker shadowy areas. After studying different images of her outfit in the light and dark (and even when it is wet and in the light) I came to the conclusion that the print itself is a semi gloss coating on the surface of the fabric. BUT, when you put a coating of say acrylic clear coat it turns darker when printed on. I also noted that even with  the "clear" print on top some areas of the fabric had a "painterly" feel to it. I ended up getting  a teal colored scuba fabric and then painted it in long strokes with a sponge and a translucent paint mixture (of transparent, white, blue and a dash of yellow) that soaked up mostly into the fabric, giving it a ghostly painterly look as the base and making the color a bit lighter than the original fabric which I found to be too intense for the base color. I also decided to try out a oil based paint for the clear coat on top of the fabric. This seems to do the trick on a synthetic material (natural cotton did seem to absorb some of the ink and make it darker). 

As with the collar and sleeve pattern I had made an initial pattern but felt it to be too angular and modified it to look more organic with slight curves and I also resized the pattern to match the size of myself. Being a bit larger than Ventress I opted to go with a few rows more in the sizing to keep in ratio with what is in the cartoon.

 

 

So far I have some of the fabric painted with the translucent white mixture along with trying to print a repeat pattern on the fabric with the oil based transparent paint. I'm having a bit of an issue with getting the pattern exactly aligned up. Which is where I am at the moment. My question so far is how close does the pattern have to match? I have pictures included for folks to look at. I might be able to stabilize some of the printed pattern and wash out part of the other sections and try again when the fabric is dry. But if I don't have to do it, I'd rather not as it is already a massive undertaking.

showing the best copy of the neoprene fabric that I have (on the right). The fabric on the left is a stretch cotton wool blend that didn't work out in my testing. But I have found that between the paint and the clear coat it lightens up and has an overall feel/look of the fabric on the left.


You can see the brush strokes of lighter colored paint on the fabric.

 

printed clear coat on top of fabric so far.


How it interacts with light and shadow. Highlights on left are from inside light and outside light on the right.


in slight motion (blurred like in many screen shots from her movement)


same angle but not in motion and shows how it blends into the fabric when in neutral lighting.


Couple of reference shots







I'll leave it here for now and hope to get feed back sooner than later.

 

Edited May 22 by barryhicks
duplicate photo

[HaringJr]

Excellent work! Great research and effort figuring out the details. 

[barryhicks]

Hey everyone. I re-printed the teal blue tunic fabric. I also found fabric for making the pants/leggings. I'm including pantone swatches for those of you who have the Pantone Formula Solid Coated. I will be trying to get the other tan/cream fabric painted over the next week or so and then start making markup patterns for the tunic and leggings. 

Apparently the other color for the pantone was not in the picture... it's 303-C

7700-C is the closest to the darker color of the striated fabric for the lighter part of the two colored pants/leggings.


4451-C is the color for the lightest part of the striated fabric for the leggings...


Somewhere between 7707-C and 7708-C for the base color of the blue/teal fabric


Fabric under an overcast day and fabric under my awning and fabric in the dark room with a light on from the outside...

[barryhicks]

Hey, so I'm back with some updates. I've been working on the pattern for the tunic and leggings. I have some of the tunic sewn together. The vest pattern (the grey fabric) I have to fine tune and then cut out of the good black fabric. I also have a pattern for the upper sleeve and am ready to cut that out of the good printed fabric. I have the pattern pieces for the legging cut and partially sewn together as well. I'm also in progress of working on a pattern for the collars as well. I've been making a pattern for the boots. The blaster I'm going to have to make that in Blender (3D program) and print it on my 3D printer I've started drawing up the design for it. It's all starting to congeal together. Once I'm done with the tunic, vest and leggings I'll start patterning for the leather goods .

My mannequin  and I are not quite the same size and she's a little bit lumpier than I am, but I'm gonna wait for modeling the outfit when the tunic and leggings are done. Hopefully sooner than later. So here's some of what I have so far.

[Naasad Tal]

That looks incredible!!

[barryhicks]

Posting a few pictures of how it's going. I'm almost done with the main tunic. I'm working on finalizing the shape for the black vest. Also, I tossed in a beginning of a boot to show the direction I'm going with it. I'll be using a zipper and hook and eye closure for the back of the collar. I'm also planning on raising the inner black collar about 1/4". Leggings are pretty much done. I have to hem the bottoms, but I won't do that part until I have the boots on the go. I'm very happy with it so far. I have black gloves. I'm still thinking which is the best way to make the gauntlets (I have a few ideas in mind and have a couple of different kinds of materials to play with).

I'm pretty excited about how this is turning out.  

      

[AphraCat]

Your work is always so stunning! I'm so excited for this build and thank you for sharing all this information too. ❤️