Television junkies have been glued to HBO's newest thriller, Westworld—which explores an alternate universe that pushes artificial intelligence to its limits—for its mind-bending premise. The plot focuses on "hosts," which are, essentially, 3-D–printed humans. But the show’s costume designer, Ane Crabtree, recently revealed to Racked that the show uses technology in a very real way, too—for the period costuming.
Westworld features a fictional American Wild West theme park, with guests and hosts wearing clothing from the 1800s, including leather chaps, tooled vests, and cowboy hats. You might expect that finding the proper apparel was no easy task, but Crabtree says it was almost impossible; nearly everything had to be bespoke. "We were using actual period fabrics to make these clothes, and there’s only so much of it. You know, fabrics today just aren’t as intricate—they’re not made the same way. With the exception of some places in Italy or maybe England, you honestly can’t find beautiful, intricate fabrics anymore. So we had to hire 3-D printers in Los Angeles to reprint all our vintage fabrics so we could have more—and then beg them to work around our crazy TV schedules," Crabtree said.
Costume designers found vintage fabrics, hand-painted and distressed them, and then replicated the textiles using 3-D printing in order to have enough duplicates for stunt doubles and to account for wear and tear. With the added pressure of professional high-definition cameras, every color and fiber had to be controlled with hand-dyeing. Perhaps 3-D printing will evolve to the level used in Westworld sooner than we think.
original text : 3DHoo
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