Long Beach has been the home to countless movie and television sets, from the hit Showtime series Dexter to the all-star cult comedy Anchorman. Along with the glitz and glamour of permits and camera rigs, in the studio of Alan Villenueva, lies a lesser-known sect of the entertainment industry—costume design.
Villenueva’s recent project include costumes for Oz: The Great and Powerful and a recently aired pilot for a reboot of the classic monster show The Munsters.
Villenueva recently spoke to the Post from his Long Beach studio regarding his art background and how he found himself designing costumes for the entertainment industry.
Villenueva spent much of his childhood drawing, tracing his children’s books and using his action figures to compose still lifes. He took classes in super hero drawing at a local community center with teacher Patrick Tierney and eventually found himself in art school, freelancing for companies like Worldwide Ducati and designing band t-shirts.
He gradated from Cal State Long Beach with a BFA in Illustration. With the guidance of the head of the Illustration Department Robin Richesson, he began an internship working with a Hollywood screenplay writer doing pre-visual concepts. It was his introduction to the excitement, realities, deadlines and stresses of working in the film industry.
In November 2010, Alan got sworn into the Costume Designers Guild (CDG), allowing him to work on union big-budget films that show in nationwide theatres. He dedicated months to revamping his portfolio to get in, created all new characters with various costumes and went through an intense review.
Since joining CDG, Villenueva has worked on numerous feature films and television shows including Disney’s OZ: The Great and Powerful, due in theatres March 2013, sci-fi feature Ender’s Game due out November 2013 and Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain. His latest project was costume concepts for the series pilot Mockingbird Lane a reboot of his favorite show The Munster’s.
“Although some Creative Directors request pencil sketches, for the most part I work completely digital with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet,” Villenueva says of his working technique. “It is weird not using a pencil anymore.”
Most of his characters are heavily art directed with reference photos, especially with period-era films, and he oftentimes is requested to do at least one finished character a day, from concept to finish. “The deadlines can be pretty gnarly,” he says, “but it has to be done when an entire film or TV show schedule depends on it.”
Check out Villenueva’s film and a variety of other work at www.alanvillanueva.com, and his film credits www.imdb.com.