Kara Thrace's costume concept sketch for Season 2's "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II." (Lot 92)

My first introduction to the world of costume design sketches was in 2007 at the Christie’s Entertainment Memorabilia Auction where Christie’s auctioned off the famous Little Black Dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.  It went for around $ 1 million.  What was equally impressive was that the concept design sketch for that dress brought $ 100,000. 

Fortunately, we were able to acquire all of Glenne Campbell’s costume design sketches for Battlestar Galactica for this auction.  There are some wonderful pieces, including costumes for Starbuck, Baltar, his acolytes and the New Caprica Police.  There is even a sketch used for the Final Five Cylon robes as seen in Season Three’s “Rapture”.  (Of course, there are no hints to who the Final Cylon is!  Some of these sketches, notably Baltar’s and the ones for young Helena and Lucy Cain, even have fabric swatches attached.  These are all original watercolors and will look amazing framed on someone’s wall.

Concept sketch of a costume for one of Baltar's acolytes from Season 4. (Lot 101)

I think there will be some bargain’s here, especially the Baltar’s Acolyte ones.  They aren’t major characters and so won’t draw the big bidders, but still, they are great pieces with tremendous eye appeal.  The Starbuck piece and the Baltar piece will draw the highest bids of this group because they are main characters.  When you buy a piece like this, it needs to resonate with you, and costume sketches are so cool because they combine the art of costume design, with painting.

Now you may wonder,  “where are the costume sketches for the main costumes and uniforms we see?”  Unfortunately, those were done by the costume designer for the mini-series, who did not stay on, and so we weren’t able to get her sketches.  So you better get one of these as there aren’t many more!

Throughout Galactica (and the other battlestars, on the occasions that their interiors have been seen) one will note various color coded binders.

One such set is lot 622 in the auction, which is a compilation of 9 different types of Galactica binders.

Lot 622 in the First Auction... a set of 9 distinct binders from Galactica.

Mostly, the silver spine binders will be found in CIC. The red spine binders are typically found in the married quarters, such as Colonel Tigh’s or the Agathon’s. Clear gray and black spines are more rare, and typically dress other sets, and the yellow spine binders are found in CIC or the Hangar Bay (depending, of course, on how they’re stickered). The FTL binder is also rare and meant for looking up the processes and minutae of the ship’s FTL system.

A blue FTL and a yellow CIC binder near the FTL console, as seen in the Miniseries, before the jump to Rangar Anchorage.

The Munitions binder, which is the red binder with the yellow decals on the spine, is briefly seen in the Miniseries as Tigh looks at the manifest for Ragnar Anchorage. (And, yes, the binder does have the inventory sheets from Ragnar Anchorage in it.)

Colonel Tigh with the Munitions Binder.

One such model is that of the Demetrius, the sewage recycling ship Admiral William Adama gives to Kara Thrace (who believes to be able to feel the way to Earth) in order to search for the fabled thirteenth colony.

This foam core model, which will be auctioned off in our first auction, measures 24″ x 16″ x 5.5″.

The foam core model for the Demetris sets.

And here are some pictures of the final product.

Demetrius common area and bunks.

Kara Thrace's quarters on Demetrius.

We’ll focus on Cally, since she’s dead. As seen in the picture below, she’s wearing a helmet (along with Prosna and Chief Tyrol) when repairing Starbuck’s Viper.

Cally wearing her deckhand helmet in the Miniseries.

Cally's helmet.

Believing that this is a rendezvous for her cheating husband, she goes to 1701D, finds a crawlspace and listens in on their conversation. Learning the truth about her husband, she returns to their quarters where she violently accosts her husband, takes his keys, and decides to take their baby, Nicky, with her. This ultimately leads to her own death, which causes Chief Tyrol’s life to sprawl out of control—from not replacing burnt relays, an admission about Cally’s hygiene during a verbal sparring session with the Old Man about clubs and things of that nature, a demotion, and being outed as a Cylon.

The hero version that is played on screen in "The Ties That Bind".

The interesting thing about the note, aside from the wholly unnecessary, corny Star Trek reference, is that the props department came up with two additional versions of this note as well.

Variant #1: "Meet at..." note. Just a bit more verbage.

Variant #2: Terse. Very terse.

In a dangerous move, Natalie‘s faction—which advocates further pursuit of the verboten Final Five—removes this inhibitor, which allows the centurions to make up their own minds about Cavil‘s lobotomization of the Raiders. (This came about after the Raiders recognized Samuel Anders as a Cylon, and broke off the battle at the Ionian Nebula of their own volition.)

Natalie holding the telencephalic inhibitor.

Closeup.

Anyway, now that you’ve looked at another cool prop, we’re going to start “paperwork week” starting Sunday night. (At least it’s Sunday night in Vancouver. Gotta love those time-zones!)

We’ve got a lot of cool paperwork-type props to show you, so don’t despair! Besides, the trees were already dead. It was just made useful. Deal with it.

And, of course, if you have a specific request on something you’d like to see featured in a future blog, we’re now taking requests. (Read: Joe will take your requests, since he writes 99% of the content you see daily on the site, anyway.) Simply join our shiny new forums and hit this thread.

Good hunting!

However this incident, and a very vocal confrontation with the Old Man at Joe’s Bar later on, result in Tyrol’s demotion to a mere specialist… which sees him painting bulkheads (hey, you can’t kill anyone painting!), doing jump rope in his quarters, and taking away young children from violent situations before said children’s mother simply goes Tarantino on a friendly rebel Cylon.

Tyrol with the burnt and replacement relay... and he's really having a bad day. He's missing the smell of cabbage already.

The good version of the relay, which Tyrol was supposed to install. (Oops!)

The burnt relay, which is the actual prop (a.k.a. "hero") used during the scene.

Mathias using the handholds.

Mathias's spacewalk, note the tether in the upper right hand corner.

Now the actual prop itself is made from rubber and metal materials, with small magnets on the “bottom” of the prop that aid in the illusion of magnetism. The magnets themselves are obviously not strong enough to attach to anything and bear the weight of a person in tandem, so for those people who buy this prop… don’t hang off the side of a truck and try that Hollywood stuff. You’ll just end up injured. Or dead, like Mathias.

Handholds with retractable tether and buckle.

The belt where the tether buckles in to. The buckle is on the top, just opposite of the black patch you see in the picture.

The buckle in question, with the piece from the tether line already inserted. (This is another piece that happened to be in the belt at the time the reference picture was taken.)

The prop, which is a metal block with machined designs, first appears in Season 3′s “Rapture” and again in Season 4′s “The Hub“, when D’Anna is resurrected by Cavil in order to stop the Cylon Civil War.

Cavil removing the boxing receptacle from the tub (S3: "Rapture").

A closeup of the receptacle as Cavil removes it (S3: "Rapture").

Closeup of the boxing receptacle.