Forest Warriors for “Stumped”
Stumped Design Mission:
Stray boldly from the Disney version of Barrie characters.
Avoid stereotypical “native” references.
Recycle and reuse whenever possible.
The heart of my design/character influence in Stumped was the re-imagining of Tiger Lily and her band of female forest warriors. While still in workshop iterations, I proposed the idea of basing the women on exotic flowers and the playwright immediately fell in love with idea—renaming the roles accordingly (Black Panther, Calla, and Spider).
Initial drawings made it clear what flowers would be referenced – spikey red epaulettes for Spider Lily and a rolled-cowl neck for Calla in deep purple. As the characters would age in the show, uniforms would remain the same in color and pattern with lengthening jackets to denote age/wisdom/experience.
Above: Spider Lily is depicted as the youngest, followed by Tiger on the far right.
Once in production, I had to simplify my designs for multiple quick changes. Using free cosplay patterns, I created original looks for each flower warrior to mimic their namesakes.
In addition to using color and form to emulate nature, an element of animal was added to each cloak in order to reference the wild and untamed nature of the character and their setting.
For “royal” characters accents of namesake flowers (crowns and single blossoms) were used.
In the collection of pictures above you can also see the lengthening robes worn by both “older” Tiger Lily and by her Mother, Chief Mowtawyn.
