It is about much more than the futility of tyranny: It is about the power of art. “It was more of a play on what Veidt would wear.Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” remains one of the best-crafted sonnets, as much for its vivid description as for the breadth and depth of its meaning. Veidt’s everyday wear, meanwhile, was all inspired by, as Kasperlik puts it, “what a proper Englishman would wear in this castle.” “He’s living in kind of this alternative world, an alternate universe,” she says. The fabric underneath is linen and cotton, helping to keep the ensemble lightweight while still maintaining a little “regal stature.” If it’s hard to tell the difference, it should be - Veidt’s armor is made by the same people who made Wonder Woman’s protective plates.
As for literally what Veidt is wearing, the costume is partly made of molded plastic which is painted, sprayed, shaded, and then painted again, as wearing metal isn’t comfortable nor practical for the actors. “When it came down to the original heroes, it’s just a nod to the original characters, and so he is very closely taken from the graphic novel,” Kasperlik explains. The costume is an exact match for Ozymandias’ costume in the Watchmen graphic novel, and is both striking and almost comical upon the older Veidt. The million-dollar moment in the episode 3 is costume-forward: the presumed-dead Adrian Veidt dons his old costume, bringing his former superhero alias Ozymandias back to life. “As the head gets warmer, it heats up the leather and it can sag, so we just needed to have that sculpted barrier in order to keep the shape consistent.” HBO Image: HBO Ozymandias’ comic book costume “I put a neoprene lining in the hood so it maintained its shape,” she adds. The hood of her coat had to be adjusted with action gussets, and Kasperlik also worked to change the weight of the leather so that the shape of it would always look striking rather than airless. That principle turned out to be particularly true when it came to Sister Night, whose costume is almost entirely black and composed of strong lines. Anytime you do a ‘simple costume’ there are so many factors in it, and you have to get the fabric right and the color right and you change the color many times.” “It’s funny to say because it almost makes it more difficult. “In creating the superhero costumes, it just has a stronger effect when it’s simplified,” Kasperlik says.
The pivotal thing with every superhero’s costume was trying to find a “simple design line” to fall in line with artist Dave Gibbons original designs. Below, we dig into all of the above, including episode 3’s big reveal. Others, like Pirate Jenny, were just names, or entirely new characters. Similarly, characters with a presence in the original material were given costumes that hewed as closely as possible to their established images. “That’s just not what Watchmen is, and that’s not what the graphic novel is, so it was very important that all of these costumes could be made, but then also that they don’t look like a Halloween costume when they’re on the actor. “In a lot of the DC and Marvel movies, have costumes that are super high-tech and have a lot of gadgets to them,” she explains.
In a show like HBO’s Watchmen, in which every detail could spawn hours’ worth of discussion, they’re even more vital, especially as once-forgotten heroes return to the fore.Ĭostume designer Meghan Kasperlik tells Polygon that the hero outfits in the HBO series committed to the comic’s logic, in which the heroes were supposed to have made their own costumes. The linchpin of any crusading hero - beyond archenemies and any potential superpowers - is a costume.