Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes, was important to the Harry Potter story. He saved the day more than once, and it’s cool to see a human take on the character. Phoenix Fawkes documented the entire process of making the mythical creature from sketches to the finished outfit. It’s interesting to flip through them to see exactly how much work and planning goes into to building a costume.

Some information on the feathers:

At first, I cut out a bunch of feathers in the wrong fabric. My plan was to add a backing to each feather. Not only did it look ugly, it was taking for freaking ever. So instead, I used those feathers at the planning stage.

As each feather was painted (so that it looked as if 12 fabrics had been used to make Fawkes, rather than 4), I needed to know which feather to paint which colour. This is the colour coding method I used.

Go check out more in progress photos!