The Spiderwick Chronicles: Costume Designer Ann Foley Talks Creating Thimbletack's Look, Compares Him to Batman

We talked to Ann Foley about everything that went into Thimbletack's look.

By Jamie Jirak

The Spiderwick Chronicles is now streaming on The Roku Channel, and the new series has broken records for the streamer. The show is based on Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's book series of the same name, and follows the Grace family as they move into their ancestral home: the Spiderwick Estate, which is also home to some magical creatures. One such creature is Thimbletack, a brownie who is voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer. ComicBook recently had the chance to chat with costume designer Ann Foley, who spoke about creating Thimbletack's look for the series. 

"I was obsessed with Thimbletack's relationship with Lucinda and with Arthur Spiderwick, and 'How did he come into the house?' and 'How did his costume come into being?' And so we had all of this really wonderful back and forth and we started this conversation about Thimbletack as a brownie living in the house," Foley explained of working with DiTerlizzi and Black. "And I mean, he doesn't care about human clothes, so 'Where did these human clothes come from?' And we sort of came upon this idea that Lucinda, as a young child, took clothes off of a doll and she started dressing up Thimbletack, and he loved her so much. He was like, 'Sure, why not? Let's just do it.'"

"And then I took it a step further and I thought, 'What about friendship bracelets?' Because kids of a certain age, they love things like that. So Lucinda decided when she was young, she made friendship bracelets for her and for Thimbletack. And he didn't really know what it was, so he used it as a bandelier ... I was very specific in my color choices. We did pink for kindness, blue for loyalty, green for responsibility. So those are the colors that are in the friendship bracelet. And then he's got that charm bracelet that he wears around his waist ... So he's put that around his waist and he's using it kind of like a tool belt, sort of like Batman in a way."

"And so we just started putting things on it, just little things ... a little tiny thing of super glue that he had found and that was connected to the charm bracelet as well. And one of the things I love so much about that bracelet is it was my mom's bracelet when she was the same age as Lucinda. So that has a little bit of a personal meaning in there as well." 

Foley was also the costume designer for She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, so we asked about dressing characters like Thimbletack and She-Hulk, who are CG. 

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"Well, I mean, it's another extra element for sure, but at the end of the day, it's about creating a character and the costumes have to tell a story about who this character is and they're there to help inform the audience," Foley explained. "So whether it's a CG costume or if it's a real costume, and in She-Hulk, we actually built every single costume ... And then everything was scanned in, so the costumes actually existed. And so our VFX team had those actual pieces there to work with. And same, actually, with Thimbletack. He actually existed, he was built here in Vancouver by this wonderful shop, and he had weight to him, you could hold him in your hands. And he was so cute. We had several of them. There were Thimbletacks all over the shop."

Stay tuned for more from our interview with Ann Foley. 

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