Costume designer Marina Toybina has pulled off one of many largest jobs of her profession – placing collectively the costumes for Disney’s “The Lion King” thirtieth anniversary celebration on the Hollywood Bowl.

The stay live performance was recorded in Might 2024 and is now streaming on Disney+.

Again in 2024, Toybina invited Selection into her Glendale studio per week earlier than showtime. There’s a calmness within the air. Animal prints and cloth are in all places as cutters and assistants sit at their stations, zeroed in on their duties. “I haven’t tapped into my principals but…that’ll begin on Friday,” Toybina says. If she’s feeling stress, she doesn’t exude it.

One has to surprise, how will she do it? Can she do it? SPOILER ALERT! Sure, she does pull it off effortlessly.

Toybina, whose credit embrace “The Masked Singer” and “Magnificence and the Beast: A thirtieth Celebration,” is not any stranger to working beneath stress, and enjoys a difficult undertaking. Disney’s thirtieth anniversary of “The Lion King” was an immersive live performance expertise celebrating the franchise’s evolution from the 1994 animated movie to the Tony Award-winning musical, and the 2019 and 2024 live-action movies. Among the many solid are alumni of the unique animated movie Jeremy Irons and Nathan Lane (who voiced Scar and Pumbaa); Billy Eichner (Timon within the 2019 remake), Jennifer Hudson, Heather Headley and North West. The undertaking is considered one of Toybina’s largest to this point, with 10 principal solid members and 30 dancers.

Earlier than touchdown the job, Toybina reveals she had seen each iteration of “The Lion King” franchise, together with the episodic TV sequence. However since this may be onstage, one of many first issues she did was work with the Broadway workforce. “I wished the principals to pop in opposition to the background projections and never overstep what had been specified by the Broadway manufacturing,” she says. “We had a name to ensure we had been aligned and there was a transparent distinction between Broadway and what I used to be doing, which was not mimicking them and supporting it with my designs.”

Along with that, Toybina spent hours taking a look at pictures as a part of her analysis. “From zebra ears to giraffe tails, to all the colours of the animals, proper right down to rhino horns, we zoomed in on all of it,” Toybina laughs.

Toybina paid further consideration to being culturally correct when designing tribal prints. She explains, “It’s South African tribal. We wanted to have the fitting colours and jewellery and ensure there have been no crossovers, that we weren’t pulling from others.”

In approaching the precise costumes, Toybina’s course of was to interrupt it down by characters. Toybina created a method deck and temper board for Hudson, which was then offered to her stylist and workforce. With West, who seems as Younger Simba that had been then handed to their respective stylists and groups. “Imaginative and prescient-wise, I do know what the entire present seems to be like.” West, who sings the younger Simba track, “I Simply Can’t Wait to Be King,” Toybina says, “I hung out on the board to ensure it’s her aesthetic and vibe.”

As soon as she had that, it was about selecting materials, prints and colours. She additionally needed to take into accounts any fast modifications. “I’ve three hyenas. They put on masks for some time, and so they go backstage, throw on capes and turn into wildebeests,” she explains.

Rhinos, zebras and elephants are among the many Pleasure Land creatures she was tasked with bringing to life by way of costume. Toybina used bodysuits as a base for lots of the designs and added parts on high, whether or not it was airbrushing stencils or hand-painting particulars onto them. “Every part is light-weight and danceable. It has the sturdiness to be a efficiency piece,” she says, ensuring every outfit was snug for the dancers to maneuver in.

Not the whole lot was custom-made — Toybina notes that some gadgets had been primarily based on store-bought supplies – “At one level, we had been at Joann’s and I used to be shopping for weave baskets to chop out.” These baskets ultimately grew to become a part of the elephants’ troupe.

Having risen to the problem of designing costumes for each “Magnificence and the Beast” and “The Lion King” stay, Toybina has another merchandise on her bucket checklist: to design costumes for a live-action Disney film. Your transfer, Disney.