Le Squatter / The Squatter

Je me suis fait squatter!

Mr C a ramené la machine industrielle donc je vous ai parlé il n'y a pas longtemps et la posé dans le milieu du salon. Il faut bouger quelques trucs avant qu'elle trouve sa place. Il l'a enfilé et au débotté, il s'est fait un besace en cuir de cerf. J'admire sa capacité d'improvisation et sa maîtrise de la machine. Son extrême rapidité me fait un peu peur.

Quand on y pense, Mr C a plus de kilomètres sous le capot que moi. Fabriquer des voiles de 200m², ça donne du millage! Il est beaucoup plus confortable avec celle-ci qu'avec la mienne qu'il trouve peu solide et qu'il a toujours eu peur de briser.

Il m'a montré des petits trucs aussi, faire un avant-arrière avec le coude en tenant le tissu à deux mains pour démarrer les coutures, comment la mettre au neutre pour faire de belles courbes. 

Maintenant, il faut que j'aille faire mes propres kilomètres.

/

I am being squatted.

Mr C brought back the machine I talked about earlier and installed it in the middle of the living room. We have to reconfigure a bit before it goes to it's rightful place. He threaded it and started sewing a deerskin messenger bag. I am totally in awe of his skill, he has this amazing capacity to "wing it" and improvise and he totally rocks the machine which I must admit scares me a little. It's so speedy!

When you think about it though, Mr C has probably sewn more than I have in linear kilometers. The making of 200m² sails will give you great mileage very fast. He's also more comfortable with a sturdier machine, he's always been wary around my flimsy home sewing machine. 

He's shown me a couple of great tricks too, how to go back and forth with your elbow whilst holding your fabric and how to make great curves by putting it in neutral. 

Now I have to go get some mileage of my own.

An Engineer's Costume

This is such a heartwarming sight!

My friend Ted sent me a picture of his dinning room right after he finished a panda bear costume for his daughter and I love it. I love the details, the fur bits strewn on the floor, the bottle of alcool for cleaning the gunky needle, the power cord on the bottom right, the lone empty cup pushed aside, the ruler, scissors, pins, scraps. I love that Ted is the one making the costumes in his family. It must be so cool to be able to say : "My Dad made it!" I love guys who sew, I actually married a guy who sews.

I am not at all surprised that Ted can operate a sewing machine, he operates a power plant in real life. I wouldn't say it's the same thing, but in my mind, the process is the same.

- Sewing is not much different than engineering, I wrote, you make a plan and then you build it.

- I shamelessly enjoy making Halloween costumes for our kids. Each one presents interesting assembly puzzles – under a hard time deadline. For the past ten years I’ve delivered on the promise: “If you can draw me a picture of it, I can make it into a costume.”
Our dining room looks like I ran a panda bear through a blender...You’d be impressed to know that the pattern I bought was a Simplicity design that looks like a one-piece pair of pajamas with a different color belly sewn on. I totally modified it to get the right color patterns and shape for a panda. Only an engineer (or an experienced sewer) would know how to draw the curved lines, cut apart the pattern pieces, and get things to all match up right. 

I don't know what you think, but since Ted's oldest of 4 is 18 (Happy Birthday Ryerson!) and seeing the results, Ted sure gets an experienced seamster badge from me!

PS : A lot of home sewers are irritated when they find out they have to do math, actually I think it would be an interesting problem to give engineering students, they might come up with fun solutions to our sewing woes.

Le Costume de l'Ingénieur

Cette photo me réchauffe le coeur!
Mon ami Ted m'a envoyé la photo de sa salle à manger après avoir fabriqué un costume de panda pour sa fille et je l'adore! J'aime les détails, les bouts de fausse fourrure, la bouteille d'alcool pour nettoyer l'aiguille, la rallonge en bas à droite, la tasse vide esseulée, la règle, les ciseaux, les épingles, les chutes de tissu. J'adore savoir que c'est Ted qui fait les costumes dans la famille. C'est très cool de pouvoir dire : "C'est mon père qui l'a fait!" J'aime les hommes qui cousent, d'ailleurs, j'en ai épousé un.

Je ne suis pas surprise que Ted puisse exploiter une machine à coudre, dans la vraie vie, Ted dirige une centrale électrique. C'est pas tout à fait la même chose, mais pour moi le processus est le même.
- La couture n'est pas très différente de l'ingénierie, je lui ai écrit, on dessine un plan puis on le construit.

- J'adore faire les costumes d'Halloween pour mes enfants. Chaque projet est un comme puzzle à assembler - dans un temps imparti très court. Depuis un dizaine d'année, j'ai fait une promesse à mes enfants : "si vous pouvez me le dessiner, je peux vous faire un costume". On dirait que je viens de mixer un Panda sur la photo... Tu seras heureuse de savoir que j'ai utilisé un patron de pyjamas Simplicity que j'ai modifié pour obtenir les couleurs et la forme du panda. Seul un ingénieur (ou une couturière expérimentée) saurait comment redessiner les courbes, couper les pièces et aligner les coutures.

Je ne sais pas ce que vous en pensez, mais comme le plus vieux des 4 enfants de Ted à maintenant 18 ans (Joyeux Anniversaire Ryerson!), Ted mérite son insigne de couturier expérimenté! 

PS : Certaines couturières sont surprises de voir qu'il faut faire beaucoup de calculs pour obtenir de bons résultats. Moi je pense qu'on devrait donner des problèmes de couture dans les écoles d'ingénieurs. Je suis certaine qu'il auraient des solutions intéressantes qu'on pourrait appliquer.

Tintin and The VFX Costume Designer

I went to see The Adventures of Tintin with Jr C this week. 

It was a rollicking good fun adventure movie, I recommend it, and costume geeks like me will love it. There was so much attention in the clothes that I oohed! and aahed! throughout the whole film. It's the first time I felt that fabric moved properly in an animation film and if you go see it, you'll be very impressed by the Castafiore scene where you can feel the light warm breeze moving the virtual silk gown she wears. (I couldn't find a screen shot, sorry, you'll have to see the movie!) 

I was so impressed, that I stayed through the credits and, in a very uncharacteristic move, I hunted down the VFX Costume Designer, Ms Lesley Burke-Harding, wrote her a gushing fan letter (without forgetting to mention that her Lords of The Rings costumes were awesome!) and asked her how she and her crew did it. 

I asked questions like : Did they motion capture silk? Do they make actual costumes? Is there a wool tweed animation specialist? How do they figure out wearing ease? Did they make the costumes and then filmed them and then animated them of is it the other way around? 

Guess what? She did take the time to answer, which I think is extraordinary. Unfortunately, she is under confidentiality clauses and can't talk about it. 

Photo Curtesy of the NYTimes

So still in the dark about how an actor dressed in a motion-capture suit like this can come out looking fully clothed on film, I asked Mr Gunnar Hansen (it wasn't difficult as I am related to him) to tell me more about VFX (visual effects) costumes.

"Cloth in CG (computer generated imagery) is super complex. They still have to create the surface models the same way as any other model, but they have to respect the dynamics and physics of cloth. This means they run physics simulations to react to the motion of the character or other forces like wind and gravity. They have to "tell" the surface where other objects are so that it does not penetrate or deform any other object nearby. They have to place "pins", "starch"  and "springs" to simulate stiffness and fold points. Then they run the simulations again and continually adjust the parameters.

They scan or paint the textures and colour, but then have to add a fur simulator to create "fuzz". The patterning is quite similar making real clothes (...), but once the modellers get it, they spend a lot of time "fitting" to the CG world around it. 

Apart from hair (in which every hair is a discreet object), cloth is really tough to make convincing. It's all about how it moves and reacts to forces and light that sells it in CG."

It's sounds like such a cool job!