Toil and Trouble Costume Designs

Looking back on this project stings a little because it was never produced, but it should have been. 

Toil and Trouble was going to be an original story about a young witch discovering her own power, infused with all the fun (and costume changes!) of a magical girl series. I didn’t got to work with the creator Lauren Faust and character designer Izzy Abreu only briefly, but while it was short it was such a joy. I was pregnant when I created these designs too, and it was a profound experience to work on external creative projects while also working on literally creating two people internally. Wild. 

Lauren had such a clear vision for what the show should be, and she was incredibly warm and receptive to my ideas. I hope she gets to make it still, somewhere and someday, and I hope on that day she will remember me, because I’d jump at the chance to work with such cool people on such a cool show, especially now that I have two extremely spirited, magical girls of my own. This is exactly the type of show that I would love to watch with them.

The main character of the series is a teenage witch who experiences a kind of magical glow-up during the story, and needed a costume fit to represent her metamorphosis. I did a first round of explorations, just experimenting with what felt witchy enough, teenage girl enough, and different enough from her “everyday” look. I drew over Izzy Abreu’s character design to keep things proportionally accurate.