Well, it seems my earlier questions about costuming have met some immediate twitter attention (man, I love me some twitter). Fantastic!

So here’s my first rough sketch of Stephen from my thumbnails of the comic. I don’t know of a way to add a colorforms-dress-up plug-in to the site (though that would be great fun…), so we’ll use this as fodder for discussion on “dressing the younger Dedalus”.

Plenty of things to ask here, hence the second post, from his boots (which are borrowed from Mulligan) to his Hamlet hat (which we’ve recently settled, thank you).

Here’s the quiz, folks; “what is this guy wearing and what should he look like?” Extra credit for the numerous things in his pocket (other than the handkerchief which I’ve already shown him losing).

I’m not much for contests, I think they’re silly crap in fact, but good answers here, at this particular juncture, could prove really helpful to me. Give me some insights on Stephen and win yourself a sketch. Hell, some of what you might say could easily put my earlier work out of context. That’s a collectors’ item of sorts, right?

Seriously. Help me out here and, remember, there’s like 200 more characters to go in the novel. Still, there’s something to be said for figuring out this guy…

-Rob

As I mentioned, this thread is really intended as a kind of “help the artist do it right” part of our site. There’s many difficult riddles and historical content within the novel of course, and it would take a lifetime for me to research these things alone leaving very little time to draw. So, as web designers are fond of saying, this is the interactive part.

While the “Telemachus” chapter has been fully story-boarded, I’ve left details that need to be resolved soon if I’m going to continue, quite a lot of them having to do with costuming. Again, I’m a painter and cartoonist with no real background in something as specific as costume design, but a great deal of respect for historical accuracy.

One major stumbling block was the shape and cut of Stephen’s “Hamlet hat” which figures so prominently throughout the day. I knew it was a beret of some sort, but modern berets are smaller, less floppy, and don’t present the sometimes pointed mitre that Stephen’s hat needs to really work.

So, problem solved, thanks to Aida Yared  over at Joyce Images. (this is, by the way, my favorite, most inspirational and most commonly used Joyce site. For a visual understanding of the world ULYSSES works in this is as seminal a text as Gifford’s)

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