Hair and Makeup

Karita Alexander

Administrator
I thought we could use a separate space for hair and makeup, so as to not clutter up the costume threads too much.
I'd love to see drawing or photos (original or curated) of the hair and makeup looks for our cast. The hosts have asked how "weird", or how much like the x-men we want the Valar to appear. This is a good place to hash that out.
We can talk about the hair styles and textures for the different peoples of Arda. Do all elves have silky, straight hair? Is there a specific family with curly hair? What does Cirdan's beard look like?
I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that there is someone else on the team who shares my shameless enjoyment of elaborate hair and makeup.
 
Let's talk about Uinen and her amazing green hair. What are we imagining? How much does it literally look like seaweed?
(I apologize for not giving proper credit to the owners of these photos; they are posted in several places and I had troubles hunting down the original sites)

Examples of hair that is more on the light blue-green side. Doesn't look much like seaweed, but it is very pretty.
uinen7.jpg
uinen.jpg
uinen6.jpg

Or maybe a darker, more true-green?
uinen3.jpg

uinen4.jpg

We could do something that mixes a natural brown with green
(I would pick something a little more mixed instead of the dark roots shown below)
uinen5.jpg

I think a dull green with hints of blue and natural brown shades works nicely. Nothing too perfect and uniform, so as to fit the character we have conceived of up to this point.
uinen2.jpg
 
A more general comment - I was thinking that some of the makeup could just go with the colours of the actors and actresses that were chosen and make them more extreme. For example, I'd like to see Idris Elba's Mandos even darker than the natural colour of his skin. And Melkor more pale. Perhaps Gothmog could, before he turns into a balrog, have disturbigly blue eyes. Ossë and Uinen could also be more pale than they are naturally, while Ulmo would be darker. Giving them these more extreme versions of their natural colours would be a way to make them seem supernatural but at the same time avoiding too much of X-men feeling.

I like all of your examples of green or blue hair for Uinen. Perhaps the colour I like most though is this one:
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Maybe slightly more green would be perfect. But not dark green, more light green.
Perhaps closer to this:
seagrass-1035975__180.jpg
 
Here are some examples that are similar to your picture, a more yellow-green.

I think we should avoid a solid and uniform color like this example. While it looks cool, that it evokes neon lights more than it does plants or anything you might find in nature.
uinen12.jpg

A more natural look can be achieved by adding a root shadow (dying the roots a darker color or a darker shade of the same color) to mimic the way hair tends to be slightly darker at the roots for most people. (the first source I could find for this picture was on the Colorful Hair tumblr. Huge respect to the artist for pairing such a bright hair color with such a natural makeup look; it looks amazing.)
uinen14.jpg


I think that mixing browns and muddy shades of yellow and green would have a beautiful effect, and would make a natural, non-green eyebrow less striking. I think the colors should be more blended rather than graduated like the picture below, but it showcases how lovely drab colors can be instead of going full on neon.
(credit to mossyforestelf, now mossjaw on tumblr)

uinen13.jpg


This is a brighter green and contrasts with the black more strikingly than is my preference for this project. However, this picture was just too pretty to pass up. It shows a true green-yellow shade that I think would look great on a woman with a medium to deep tan skin tone, which I believe the case with the actress who was chosen in Casting.
(credit to gennninja on tumblr, and to pravana for their neon green and yellow dyes )
uinen11.jpg
 
I think that mixing browns and muddy shades of yellow and green would have a beautiful effect, and would make a natural, non-green eyebrow less striking. I think the colors should be more blended rather than graduated like the picture below, but it showcases how lovely drab colors can be instead of going full on neon.
(credit to mossyforestelf, now mossjaw on tumblr)

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This colouring is perfect I think.
 
While I do believe that some characters will obviously need different eye and hair colors, I think we should try to make it look as natural as possible.

Steer awar from something that looks extremely false, like fosforescent colors or uniform colors. Most of us don't have a natural uniform colors, we have some lighter and hairs.

I fear that going with anything too bright migh be reminiscent of an Anime character.
 
Yes I think it's important that if Uinen is going to have green hair, it should be the colour of pale seaweed and not too bright green.
As I wrote above, I think we should generally go for emphasising the actors' and actresses own colours, and if we're changing their natural hair colour, we should use other natural hair colours.
 
I'm sort of with Haakon on this one, I don't want the costuming to look like live action Anime. Sofia Boutella has pretty dark brown hair, I'd rather the green in her hair be visible only when the light hits it a certain way. We could have some props to weave into her hair, a la Manwe's feathers, but any hair coloring should be subtle, I think, especially since so many of our Valar are going to have mostly-natural hair colors, having some of them stand out too much is going to look bizarre.
 
I thought we could use a separate space for hair and makeup, so as to not clutter up the costume threads too much.
I'd love to see drawing or photos (original or curated) of the hair and makeup looks for our cast. The hosts have asked how "weird", or how much like the x-men we want the Valar to appear. This is a good place to hash that out.
We can talk about the hair styles and textures for the different peoples of Arda. Do all elves have silky, straight hair? Is there a specific family with curly hair? What does Cirdan's beard look like?
I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that there is someone else on the team who shares my shameless enjoyment of elaborate hair and makeup.
image.jpg Cirdan's beard looks like this.
 
Yes, but that is just one interpretation. There can be many, specially when it comes to fan art.
 
Couple of thoughts for characters not yet discussed:

While I vaguely remember the execs wanting to keep her hair short, I like the idea of a 50's style "rolled" hairdo for Ungoliant. Something that could recall the balloons formed in the web once prey is caught.

1940s%20vintage%20hair%20updo%20reverse%20side%20roll.jpg



While for the pre-fall Balrogs, we could play with red/orange hair, short with sharp texture:

490fa7f9e47c1c51fef68c4f22f86e60.jpg
Ginger-Short-Spiky-Hair.jpg


I, for one, would like for the haircuts to be similar for the male & female Balrogs: less dependent on gender and more emphasis on their cohesion as a unit.

Thuringwethil (sticking to my idea that she be a petite little blonde "ingenue") could either have a longer pixie cut or "princess curls":

Blonde-Pixie.jpg
67998d489d1710e0d5393cc3ae71ad9d.jpg


either could work for the secrets-obsessed Mean Girl Incarnate.
 
N
did we discusd yet male hairstyles for elves and ainur?
No we haven't.
I was thinking that if possible we could try not to go for the straight glossy long locks that we see in a lot of art for Elves. Maybe using the actors who have been cast as a starting point and keep there natural hair, e.g if they have curly hair then then use that. I can't remember ever reading about their hair apart from Galadriel who's hair is very important at some points.
Also it would be nice to have different length hair for some of them. for instance long flowing hair is not the best with working over a hot forge.
 
sure... but they for example can bind it back when at work. some smiths i know have long hair... they have solutions fir that while working.
 
Yeah, I had really long hair while working in a machine shop with various hot and spinny things about. There are definitely things that can be done, but I understand the desire to be different.
 
sure... but i thought we were consent that elves are very. proud of their hair and shorn hair was a sign of being unfree.. so while not all free elves may have shoulderlong hair, they'd all have the tendency to wear their hair at least noct very short
 
I missed the bit about their hair pride sorry. But some different would be lovely i was just wanting to avoid the PJ elf hair long straight and smooth some waves curls.
What did we decide about the hair colour of the difference groups?
 
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