You loved the Spiderman costume your mother made you when you were a kid, but who makes Spidey’s costume for the blockbuster movies?
The Spiderman 2 suit was dreamed up by costume designer Jim Acheson whose film credits include Brazil, Restoration, and Daredevil. But bringing a 2D drawing into 3D reality takes a team. Acheson collaborated with DigitalFusion’s Hugh Milstein to bring Spiderman’s suit to life. Acheson worked closely with Milstein to create realistic muscles and fantastic colors for the costume.
“The catch was that we had to print on stretch fabric, so conventional color sync methods only applied so far,” said Milstein. “The trick was to play with the levels of saturation and density so that when we pulled the costume over Toby, a darker color would stretch and become lighter – we took that into account with the digital patterns.”
The key element in creating the suit was the subtle variations in shadow to emphasize muscle so that when Maguire put the suit on he instantly looked like he was in superhuman shape.
Milstein recently worked with Acheson to create the costume in the eagerly anticipated Spiderman 3. “It’s a top secret process right now,” says Milstein. “But I can tell you, you’re going to want to get a ticket for this one.”
