Twisted Metal costume designer Liz Vastola helps make a post-apocalyptic world a little brighter. Instead of a world in absolute decay and darkness, she’s kept some slices of the ’90s alive and somewhat well in the Peacock series. People are still people, and people like to wear color.
It’s a wise choice made by a genre savory costume designer, no question. Vastola is behind films such as The Innkeepers, Cold in July, and We Are What We Are. Additionally, she adapted Daredevil and Jessica Jones from page to screen with the Netflix adaptations. In other words, she’s a nerd-friendly costume designer whose skills for both adapting and advancing served the adaptation of the video game series well.
The Twisted Metal costume designer, who’s currently in pre-production on season, spoke with Immersive Media about her take on Sweet Tooth, tailoring drivers to their cars, and why John Doe’s (Anthony Mackie) Hi-C t-shirt was a must-have.
You’ve worked on some great genre movies, Cold in July and The Innkeepers, plus Jessica Jones and Daredevil, and of course, Twisted Metal. As a costume designer, what is it you appreciate about genre-heavy projects?
It’s so exciting to be on something that really has a lot of flexibility and a very high ceiling in terms of creativity and how far you can pitch to push things. Those types of shows, including now with Twisted Metal, there’s just such a freedom, especially in the prep phase and in the production phase of just diving into research, planning, and letting your mind just go wild. Of course, each of them have their own parameters, their own kind of creative world that we’re living in, but Twisted Metal is definitely one where the net is very wide and the more, and the creativity is just buzzing from every department. It’s really a gift.
What did your mood board look like for Twisted Metal? What was on there maybe outside of the game?
Well, first of all, it was basically anything that was early-200s and then prior was open game. For the most part, as long as it was something that would’ve existed to the world that the characters would’ve been aware of or had been able to have at their fingertips, it definitely could have been a possibility. So, there was historical and fashion research focused on the ‘90s and early 2000s.
And then we took, for example, when thinking about Sweet Tooth’s costume, I looked at the history of how people who deliver ice cream dress and also the history of clown and circus, thinking through all these different motivations of how he lands at the costume, he lands on the genre of the show, but then also the subject matter and the time period of it really allowed for a lot of different possibilities.
Did Ice Cream men influence Sweet Toth’s pants?
Yeah, so there’s ice cream, but also really the classic Milkman vibe. There’s a cut scene in an early Twisted Metal game where you see the origins, a little bit of the white pants that he’s taken them from a delivery driver who has a real sort of ‘50s vibe, a guy with white slacks and a white top and a little jaunty hat. I think the idea is that he found these pants off of a dead guy, and then with the mask and all the kind of elements of his costume that he found living in the sort of post-apocalyptic version of Vegas, he cobbled together this persona for himself that did feel clown, but also felt a little bondage.
We kind of thought of, well, how did these red dots get to his pants? What’s the origin story for all of this? How do we motivate it so it doesn’t just feel like a costume that he got at a costume store? And we were thinking that he was probably inspired by what he had available to him wherever he found the clown mask on the side of the road in New Vegas and maybe painted his circles himself and really got into it as a way to kind of establish his outward facing look to the world and melded it with his ice cream truck.
Did you immediately want to know what Sweet Tooth’s truck looked like, just to know how they’d pair?
A hundred percent. The vehicles are so important for each costume, especially the costumes for the characters that don’t change. They really have to be in sync with the cars, because the car is essentially another version of their outfit. It’s like an armored protective mode of transportation that becomes their house, what they’re wearing, where they sleep, how they survive. And if they don’t look like they belong in their car based on what they’re wearing, then there’s going to be a disconnect there. And especially with the color palettes of the cars, that drove home a lot of what the colors we chose for different characters. Yeah, it’s hugely important to the show and to the costume design.
How many prototypes did you have for Quiet’s jacket? Was that the original vision for that jacket or did it evolve quite a bit?
It went through a lot. I think it started off, the original points of reference for that jacket were a kind of combination between a Matador jacket and a marching band jacket, and then also something that would feel like it was left in the back of a theater of a high school. It’s something that felt pedestrian enough that it didn’t feel like Loud robbed a museum. It had to visually fit into the world of the other of everybody else and the tone.
In earlier versions of that jacket, there was more filigree, more detailing on the shoulder, and a little bit more just stuff going on with it. I think through subsequent versions and edits and feedback, it got to a more simple place, even though it’s still wild out in left field. I thought it also brought a really strong color to the screen in the way that John’s yellow shirt and Stone’s blue shirt do. It was important I think for MJ, our showrunner, myself, and the production designer that we were not afraid of color. This was going to be a saturated world as opposed to a more beige post-apocalyptic world.
The Hi-C shirt John wears, how was it tracking down a lot of shirts and brand shirts from the late ‘90s and early 2000s? Is that considered vintage now?
Well, Hi-C was so funny because one of the things that I was hoping for is to not have a situation where we had no graphics. In television, you have to be mindful of graphics, branding, it can kind of be a minefield. A lot of times designers just stay away from it because it’s a lot of work to go through. But I know growing up in the ‘90s that we were bombarded with graphics way more than youth and adolescents had been in the ‘80s or even the ‘70s or the ‘60s. It was really the time of commercialization and branding and fashion. You think about Tommy Hilfiger and you think about Ralph Lauren, and then you also think about Coke clothing companies, like Big Dog or No Fear. It was a graphic heavy time.
So I wanted to not do something that would’ve been too distracting, but definitely try to work in a graphic so I could understand or motivate why John would just be wearing a yellow T-shirt all the time. Hi-C Drop jumped in my brain as something verbally that kind of has that high octane vibe to it. The clearance was like, “This is going to be impossible, but if you can do it, you will sign off on it legally.” And we called Coca-Cola, who owns Hi-C, and we pitched them. “They were like, well, you could talk to the Hi-C legal guy,” some guy who probably hadn’t been called in a while for this type of thing. He was so amazing and signed off on it. I mean, that kind of thing never happens, so it felt like kismet.
Sweet Tooth’s mask looks great, by the way. How many versions of that mask did you have to go through? What textures did you want?
The mask I’m very proud of because it was an original sculpt from an incredible builder who actually does a lot of fabrication work for Saturday Night Live. I’m from New York, and so I knew him from New York. His name is Sam Hill. He sculpted that face from scratch, so it wasn’t a 3D print or a scan or find the mask in Halloween Adventure and then scan it and print it.
In the beginning, we were sort of like, “Oh, should it be a little different.” But then it became very clear that no, it really has to match. We can’t take any kind license with this, because it’s such an iconic character that fans love from the game and we just need to replicate it. Sam, the two of us, I would sort of be able to take a step back and look at what feels like it needs to get smaller or bigger.
And then, our showrunner and director would weigh in as well. You need as many eyes as possible to make sure you don’t miss something or you’re not too far into it. Once the sculpt was done in clay, then it had to be molded in a plaster mold. And then, we ran it in a kind of hardened liquid neoprene, which was a great material for, because it’s like resin, but it’s softer.
From a safety perspective, it wouldn’t crack and scratch somebody’s face like resin. There’s some shock absorbency there. As the actor wears the mask and sweats in it and works in it and breathes in it, it does kind of mold and shape easier to the face. So, that was Sam’s idea for the material. The paint, he did a pass at the paint, and then I did a pass at the paint job on top of his paint job. And then it got distressed and it just went from there.
The eyes really pop on that mask.
Oh, good. What was great about that is that somehow Joe was really able to emote with his eyes through the mask in a way that he did such an amazing job with that. We actually, it’s interesting you point that out because in the beginning, the eye holes were a little bit smaller, and then with X-ACTO knives, made them bigger because it was such the only way really for him to emote. It turned out to be a good decision, but all credit to Joe.
We talked about this a little earlier, but I can’t imagine the amount of pressure on costumes knowing it’s what the characters will wear for almost an entire season. Have you had many jobs like that?
Well, Daredevil and Jessica Jones, I think working on those two shows were really educational for me in that way. A great lesson in how to keep fresh. Jessica, she had the jacket, so we had a little room to play with the jeans and the under layers and to some extent the shoes. But that was one version. And then Daredevil is a similar, and especially not actually the super suit, which is its own thing, but the black version and the half mask with the white underneath, that was a similar amount of pressure.
You just learned how to deal with that in the genesis of it, and then taking feedback and critiques and suggestions, and then making sure the actor feels good because they’re going to be in that costume for a very long time. All of those elements play into it. The more open you are, but at the same time confident in your vision, the collaboration becomes richer and makes the job easier and less scary.
Twisted Metal is available to stream on Peacock.
