Rediscovering the Magic....

So after several weeks of hypothetically talking continually about the next video game project in school being Fantasy/Medieval in nature, I caved in last Sunday and watched Fellowship of the Ring for the first time since Return of the King came out on extended DVD. So what, five years or so? That period of time was like an overdose to my imagination: seeing Fellowship right on opening day, looking up at the screen in awe screaming "I want to do this for the rest of my life!", then Pirates of the Caribbean started to come out as well, combining swashbuckling adventures with epic war-scale fantasy movies. I think Fellowship of the Ring was actually the start of one of my artistic hobbies of creating costumes - probably even what led me to wanting to do conceptual artwork in general. I practically adored Aragorn's "Strider" outfit, and immediately started making hundreds of sketches of trying to make a female ranger outfit. (that's right, boys and girls: screw being one of the female characters, I wanted Aragorn's frickin sword and duster jacket. The amount of thought and detail that went into damn near each stitch......) After finding out what the details were with the special features included in the Extended Editions, I begged my parents for each movie for christmas, happily spending the first week after that holiday pouring over all of the special features and behind-the-scenes before ever even touching the first two DVDs in the series. As an anniversary gift in high school, my bf got me a copy of "Weapons and Warfare" of Middle-Earth, detailing every pauldron and vambrace and niche in each race's armor. The fact that a lot of the dress and such were based on blends of different cultures in real history....that just made it more awesome.

I wanted to describe the initial attraction to the Middle-Earth series first so you'd get where I'm coming from. Back in high school my parents got me Aragorn's sword Aundril, and the sword itself came up in my head while thinking about getting a new photoshoot done. I haven't had a good series of photos taken in a few years, and personally, I think a portfolio is made more personable if you have a current photo of yourself on the "About the Artist" page. If you can pull off looking like a creative, intelligent person who's fun to work with/be around (but knows how to keep to a schedule/etc), then I think you look like a creative (and hireable!) artist. I decided on a "geek chick of awesomeness" motif. We'll see if it works out at all...and damnit, I wish that Aundril's scabbard was cheaper than $125......

Anyway, when I put the DVD in on Sunday, I was just going to have it as background sound while I worked, occasionally glancing up and smiling at the badass action scenes or anything else. Nope. I had to watch the whole thing and immediately start scribbling down ideas for new garb for April. I figure that if no one else that I've seen in the SCA so far is being a huge stickler for historical accuracy, I can start playing designer as long as I find people to help me sew it together. I'm slowly improving on building clothing, it just takes for freakin ever. Will probably post pictures when I get some color schemes up. In similar news: who the hell thought the bright gaudy-ass clothing for LOTR online was a good idea? Seriously....way to kill me ever wanting to play the game.

that's my ramble for this week. If you see me out running around with a big frickin sword.....well......I warned ya.