Back in 2011 there was a programme on TV called The Great British Hairdresser on E4. Like Bake-Off, or the Sewing Bee, it was a hairdressing competition. In it, the 16 or so competitors where whittled down every week, and had challenges like doing hair for a live shoot in Ibiza. One of the challenges was to do a woodland, animal shoot with hair to match. One hairdresser did a hedgehog, with spiky hair. One did a rabbit, with the model's hair up in two big bunches (they got marked down because the parting wasn't dead center!), one picked frog, one a swan, one a cat.
Unfortunately I can't seem to find any screenshots of it! They were really interesting, and I was looking at them from a photography point of view rather than hair or modelling.
Anyway, this got me thinking about doing my own animal style photoshoot! It's been, what, 8 years now, and I still haven't done it and I probably never will, but I like the idea.
My idea was to have a fashion style shoot with the models as animals. I don't mean them wearing fursuits or whatever, but wearing almost normal clothes (especially since I was using my friends as examples!) that are the right colours, then adding ears and tails.
For example I designed a fox outfit that was a simple white t-shirt, an orange open cardigan, orange-ish trousers - dark red or brown would work enough - with black shoes and black gloves. A pair of ears attached to a headband, and a stuffed tail attached to the back of the trousers would complete the look. I also did a badger - grey tunic, black trousers, black shoes and gloves - and a rabbit - grey or brown top and trousers, a white scarf like a ruff, white gloves - and again add ears and tails.
(Again, I did these about 8 years ago!)
The makeup would be makeup rather than face paint, but to look a little like the animals. The badger would be the most pronounced as we'd put the stripes on the model's face, with a black nose. I looked through Pinterest and Google for ideas for the makeup, and I think more subtle ones would work well.
(ALL MAKEUP IMAGES BELOW TAKEN FROM PINTEREST - NONE ARE MINE)
Bat, Squirrel, Badger, Raccoon, Rabbit, Owl, Ladybird, Frog, Fox, Bear, Deer, Beaver
I thought of places and poses for each animal, alone and in groups. Say the bear was sleeping and the fox, squirrel and rabbit sneaked up on it. Or the beaver searching for branches, or the bat hanging out in an alcove. Plus standard model poses.
It's never really going to happen, but I still would love to do this!