A completely different approach

I decided it might be helpful to think about how I might try to use generative AI to do the kinds of assignments I was given in my costume design class back in the 1990s. I did an individualized major so I took several semesters of advanced costume design.

I fully own that I’m working with knowledge about how these classes are taught that is 30 years old. Perhaps professors of costume design now do not assign well-known plays as design assignments. If you’re currently a professor of costume design, and that is how your class has been structured, this post may inspire you to revise the nature of the assignments in your class.

So when I was an undergraduate, a few times a semester we would be assigned a play to read, something well-known like an Arthur Miller or Noel Coward or Shakespeare script. We’d have to read the play and then create costume design renderings for a selection of the characters, usually three or four.

So I decided to start by asking Copilot to tell me about the Loman family in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. I then asked it to create a family portrait of Willie, Linda, Happy, and Biff.

.

Honestly, not bad. 

I then asked it to tell me the plot of Sophocles’ play Antigone. I asked for a portrait of King Creon with his two adult daughters and son in Ancient Greek clothing & got this:

Are either of these images acceptable for a working costume designer to turn in as final renderings? No. 

Would they be a credible first stab at a costume design project for either one of these shows? Perhaps