#neil pye
Rik and Ade universe vine comp
Wow this tumblr is dead. Anyway I’ve been at uni for 2 months now and I hate it. I’ve been brightening up my days by watching shows with Rik Mayall in them, also creating a wall in my room full of different Rik Mayalls from shows/movies he’s been in.
The Young Ones has always been one of my favourites since I first watched it when I was 7 :)
the perfect christmas gifts
the lads and Little Ben Elton (from how the young ones changed comedy)
about the boys, from NME in the mid 80’s
apparently, ade wrote as himself instead of vyv and chris wasn’t even invited to write about mike.
the young ones title cards (s2)
the young ones title cards (s1)
Grabs him by the throat
I LOVE YOU
Hand painted 35mm metal miniatures of Rick,Vyvyan,NeilandMike from The Young Ones. For each base, I added a colour I associate with the person, a symbol to represent them and made them extra gross looking. Watermark - My instagram
Behind The Scenes - Neil’s Costume
“Hello vegetables! It’s Neil here!”
Well, strap yourselves in boys, for here is my write up about this smelly hippie’s costume.
Finding the costume -
I said I didn’t want to start this cosplay, unless I found the main piece I wanted which was Neil’s coat. I loved that coat the minute I laid eyes on it as I’ve always wanted a long, billowing coat for years. I researched and researched what sort of coat Neil had and from my findings, it was a genuine 1944 greatcoat from WWII. To me, it’s almost a throwaway gag that’s never commented on in the show that someone like Neil, a hippie, wears a coat from something that wasn’t peaceful in the slightest.
Coats from WWII and around the era of the late 30s/early 40s came in all sorts of shapes, slight differences in colours and sometimes fabrics. So for me to be able to find the exact date of coat I was looking for was extremely helpful. EBay was my friend in finding the one piece that would get the ball rolling.
The Coat -
I spent a ridiculous amount of time browsing eBay to find my dream coat, glued to it at times, trying multiple different filters and search words. A lot of the time, it was spitting out PERFECT coats within my budget but it was WAY too small, or PERFECT size and WAY too expensive. I understood very quickly that military coats, especially original ones, went for a pretty penny. That was when I came across this one. I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m a bit of a cheapskate and if I know I can get something cheaper, I will. So ideally my budget for this coat was around £50 but I was willing to go over a bit, if the right one came along. (This one had a few differences to Neil’s but it was pretty much dead on.) It’s starting price was £50. I put down £60 max bid and sat on my phone for days hoping and praying no one else swiped it from me. The day came for the auction to end, and I won it! £50, £61 total with postage. What a steal!
It arrived a few days later and let me tell you, this thing was HEAAAVVYYY (and not in the Neil way)! The postage stamp said 2kg and even when wearing it around which, you bet your ass I wear this out and about, you can feel the weight of it. It was in superb condition considering the potential age of it. I had no photographs of the interior of the coat so I was hoping it would have had a label (most coats of the period had a small patch sewn in that the wearer could add their name, it said the year of the coat and what size it was) but alas, it did not have the label.
I decided to take it down to a local antiques shop where there was a military shop within the shop which specialised in historical items. This was purely because I have no chill and I needed/was really interested in seeing whether someone who knows what they’re doing, knew whether it was authentic. The two gentlemen I saw in the shop were incredibly helpful. They said without a patch on the inside, it’s hard to date it but when one of them asked to feel the weight of it, he straight away said it was authentic and definitely WWII. The way you can tell the era is from the buttons. The shape of the crown on the buttons was more straight edged for King George where as Queen Victoria’s crown was more rounded. My coat also came with a couple of pips on the top shoulder too, which apparently means it could have belonged to a Lieutenant and from the buttons, Royal Artillery.
They also politely asked me how much I paid for it and when I said, the man’s eyes lit up and he said “BARGAIN! They go for about £80 - £90 depending on the condition and yours is great condition!” He informed me that with the pips and buttons alone, I could get about £15 for them. He also asked me whether I was a re enactor and was curious why I decided to buy it. I said “Well… you know the TV show The Young Ones…?” and he got what I meant when I explained what I was up to and he seemed impressed with how much research I’d done.
“Flares are coming back in! I read it in my horoscope!”
The rest of the costume -
I feel like the rest of the costume was a fairly easy walk in the park. The shirt probably took the longest to find and even then, wasn’t that difficult. All I did was go around all the charity shops in my area and found it. It’s darker than I would have liked but it’s really good quality and a fairly close match. The trousers are corduroy men’s trousers from M&S. I happened to find them one time while with a friend and I left them because I wasn’t sure. A month passed and I was in M&S again and I saw them, but there was only one left in my size so I saw it as fate and grabbed them. They aren’t flares but because they’re men’s trousers, there is a bit more room so they look slightly flared on me.
The trainers are actually my high top Sketchers that I used to wear for work. I know Neil wears low top Adidas trainers but I didn’t particularly want to fork out for them right now, maybe in the future though. Very similar to Vyvyan where I wore my Peaky Blinders boots for the shoot, I’ll probably get actual Adidas trainers if Neil comes out to play for a Comic Con one day or something. In my mind as well, the trainers were covered by the trousers so you couldn’t see they were high tops. Besides, the trainers I used genuinely had a hole in one of them so it fit Neil perfectly!
(Photo from ebay)
“Oh wow, I never knew I wore a wig.”
As some of you may know, I have very short hair so there was no doubt I was going to need a wig. The wig I settled on was this one that had a lace front as I had always been told that was more natural looking. I spent a little more money on this wig just because I didn’t want to spend all this time getting all the bits and then for me to use a bad wig. It just didn’t sit right with me. When it arrived, I realised very quickly that it was A) too long and B) too curly. I went for this wig because it was wavy and although in some scenes, Neil appears to have quite straight hair, in actuality, he’s got a bit of a natural wave in his hair. This was nothing I couldn’t try and fix though. So I used straighteners to dampen the curls and a friend of mine at work who also cosplays, leant me a polystyrene head so I could attempt to cut it. I wish I had of took a photo of the set up because it was ridiculous. I had two broom handles shoved in the bottom of the head, leaning against my kitchen counter, a pair of semi okay bog standard scissors, some clips, a comb and my nervous ass. It was make or break: cut it too short, it’s ruined. I actually put the wig on, put a hair tie to where I kinda wanted it and then roughly cut it off. To fix the ends, I just did what I remember seeing hair dressers do to feather it out. It actually worked out find. Phew. The lace front I just cut to my hairline and even though I think I messed it up, it worked out semi okay because I just planned to glue it down anyway.
Props for the photoshoot -
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from shooting self portraits and you’re not that confident, props are a massive help. I was just walking to work one day and a random thought popped into my head. ‘What about some canned goods that Neil could be carrying to make it look like he’s just been to the shops…?’ and then another voice went 'LENTILS! Neil’s own brand of Lentils!’. So then this random item was born. I made it in photoshop and just designed something I thought Neil would put out. If you want to see the other sides of the can, it’s here. I knew Neil wouldn’t just have one can, so that’s why I made multiples. Underneath the labels are garden peas, mushy peas and carrots. No idea which is which now!
With photography, props are a really good tool for when you don’t know what to do with your hands and it gives you something else to concentrate on. I’m definitely more for being behind the camera and not in front of it so for each costume, I always think 'what would this character own or carry?’ and see what comes up. Rick was a note book and pen and cigarettes, Vyvyan was cigarettes and matchsticks and Neil was a guitar, his record and a bag of canned goods. I also threw in for good measure Neil’s rain bonnet from the episodes Flood and Nasty just because A) I think it’s adorable and B) all his hair isn’t even covered by it anyway! When I went to my first con September last year, I carried round a bag that I had made so that I could have something to pose with but keeping it themed to the character so I didn’t destroy the illusion and could hide all the things I needed to carry for the day. So by bringing in props, theoretically, it makes you more confident in front of the camera.
The photoshoot -
I want to say that the make up I used was really complicated and it actually wasn’t. I used my usual concealer to get rid of a few blemishes, a slightly warm brown colour around my eyes to make them look a bit tired, a darker brown for contouring under my eyes and the crease where I smile, a dark brown for the eyebrows (as mine are fairly light) and a very sparingly used black eyeshadow to make it look like I had a five o'clock shadow like Neil. As a tiny detail, I used a teeny bit of dark brown in the corners of my mouth so when I frowned or pulled a sad face, it looked more dragged out like Nigel’s.
I’d say 90% of this photoshoot was shot on my own, by myself. The gear I used consisted of my camera (Nikon D5300 with flip out screen, really useful), a wireless trigger and a tripod. That’s it. No extra lighting, just reliant on the weather. The same applied to Rick and Vyvvan’s shoots. It’s almost better sometimes to shoot portraits of yourself on your own because A) You know what photographs you are looking for B) If you’re not confident in front of a camera and you’re on your own, you’re more likely to loosen up C) You can take all the time in the world taking them as you’re on your own schedule.
I set my camera up where I wanted it, clicked it to the right settings and then got into position. In order for this to work, I set the wireless trigger on a small timer and the camera to take five photographs in 5 second intervals. This was so when I pressed the button on the trigger, I had time to put it in my pocket, pose, 5 seconds, click, pose, 5 seconds, click and so on. After the time was up, I could then look at the photographs on my camera, see what I liked, what worked and what I need to change and then repeat the process. I’m primarily a film photographer so I’m used to shooting 10 sometimes 12 images on a single roll of film. So when given freedom and having unlimited amounts of photographs I could take, I did go slightly overboard.
I knew for Neil I wanted to make surrealist piece that was reminiscent of the scene from the episode Oil where Neil was granted 6 pairs of hands by the genie in the teapot. (Side note: there is no easy or non weird way of explaining that to your housemates who have only really watched a couple of episodes of The Young Ones because I had it on the telly in the living room that they were sat in one time.) It was a simple piece to make to be honest, I took some photographs of poses I wanted to use as a base image then took A LOT of photographs of my arms in all sorts of positions and poses. In post, I then picked the base I liked the most (i.e. the pose and face that looked the best), edited the arms by just erasing round them and placing them in, tweaked the colours and used the burning tool to create shade where shade needed to be until I was happy. The end result is just really great and I’m quite proud of it.
The other 10% of this shoot was shot by a bribed with Chinese food housemate. I went slightly out of my comfort zone for this and walked to the market in one of the main parts of the city I live in, IN COSTUME. I must admit I got some funny looks and double takes but in retrospect, I feel like I blended in more than if I was to walk down the street dressed as Vyvyan and even Rick for that matter. I knew I wanted to shoot some images in front of the fruit and veg stall and once I got that, I last minute remembered there was a hippie stall just not far from the fruit and veg one. With a bit more confidence, I bounded up there and got the last few images I needed. It ended up being a great backdrop with all the dangly charms, dream catchers, incense burners etc. Very Neil!
All in all, I’m extremely happy with the outcome of this cosplay. He might not be the most complicated looking man, but he was certainly fun to dress up as.
If you’d like to see the finished results, have a look here for part 1andhere for part 2.
“Vegetable rights and peace!”
Neil, The Young Ones.
“Hello, would you like a cup of herbal tea?” - Neil, The Young Ones
My complete costume of the beloved hippie, Neil.
“Vegetable rights and peace!” - Neil, The Young Ones
My complete costume of the beloved hippie, Neil.
Sneaky sneak peeks from my photoshoot today with a certain beloved hippie. Official photos coming soon.
