Costuming "Scary Smash" - Written By A Kid Ep 1 Behind The Scenes

ROBIN VANE: It was a really great collaboration with
Daniel, because he let me do my thing.
And that's kind of my favorite way to work, I think, is when
I feel like the director trusts me to create a vision
that will go along with all of the other visuals that he's
thought of.

DANIEL STRANGE: I was so happy with how the
costumes turned out.
I asked Robin Vane to do them.
And what I told her was I wanted to feel like the actors
literally put on drawings.
And her solution to that was to get plain clothes and
actually draw the costumes on them, which I
thought was very clever.
ROBIN VANE: It was really meaningful to me that it was
done by hand, because the story is told by a kid.
It's got a very childish feel to it.
And for me to kind of get dirty, like get paint on my
fingers and stuff and execute these costumes,
it fit right in.
Like the process also had something to do with the
finished piece, like the two things were married.
MALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE]
there was a guy who was inside a truck who goes to houses and
deliver milk.
ROBIN VANE: Here's the '50s milkman, which started out as
just a basic white shirt that I then enhanced, I guess, all
the top stitching and all the lines around here.
And this his bow tie, which I painted and used a little bit
of permanent marker on.
This is the milkman hat, which I had a baseball hat that I
then put felt and fabric on top of.
And then I painted on top of that to make it look like it
had the sheen of that plastic visor.
MALE SPEAKER: And a SQUAT team came.
And they come out and fight for the battle.
ROBIN VANE: So this is my SQUAT team uniform with the
vest drawn on.
This was really a lot of fun to do.
And it started out as just a button-up shirt.
And I added some snaps in back here so that the zipper would
seem to be intact, not broken up by buttons.
And here are the elbow pads, which were also a
lot of fun to do.
I think I just really enjoyed doing the shiny bits, making
those look real.
MALE SPEAKER: And you got jeans.
ROBIN VANE: I just really wanted to look for the
cheesiest, most blue jean blue jeans I could find.
And yeah, so it has the similar knee pads, and yeah,
various belts and buckles, and the gun
holster here on the side.
And yeah, then he's got a belt too, which I just
outlined the edges of.

So this is my '50s housewife dress.
So it started out originally as just a white dress, and
then I colored in all the polka dots with different
permanent markers and kind of highlighted all the seams and
the pretend top stitching for the apron.
And here's the back with the apron bow, which was kind of
fun to execute.
These were the housewife shoes, which I found at a
thrift store and decided to make them a little bit more
graphic by adding permanent marker lines.
Here's the oven mitt that I made for the housewife.
Which, again, I used permanent marker on felt to make
something kind of 2D look 3D.
I guess the main challenge was mostly technical, I think,
just figuring out how to make things
look 3D on a 2D surface.
And some of the cloths reacted a little bit differently to
paint, so I'd have to add more paint, just kind of working
everything, letting it dry in the sun.
And then, yeah, going over it with marker and all that.
DANIEL STRANGE: I kind of feel bad that the costumes are so
good, because I think that they fool the eye.
So you don't appreciate what you're seeing.
You look at them and you're like, oh, that guy's wearing a
uniform with a vest and elbow pads and everything.
You don't realize he's just wearing a shirt and pants.
It's only when you see in real life, and you get to see it
from the different angles and turn it that you're like, this
is incredible.
And the line work on it, it's amazing.
She did a great job.