Fashion

For fashion we had to look at creating a garment made only from paper and cardboard, that could be worn by both males and females. At this point in the project I was still looking at my Lolita collected items and so decided that a skirt would be the easiest thing to make that would fit and could also be easily worn by everyone.

When searching for examples of this and influence for my project I came across a piece made of crepe paper by Anayeli Sanchez, which included a matching head bow. This interested me from the Lolita aspect as the skirts often come with matching head bows.

(Source: http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_22533555/school-bell-brentwood-students-make-wearable-paper-fashions )

I was also previously aware of work by Lolita inspired fashion student and designer Cyril Lumboy aka Doll Delight who once made a Lolita silhouette inspired dress, again with matching headbow from newspaper. She is an avid follower of japanese street fashions, making using her as an influence for my project perfect. In 2008 she was placed first in the University of Phillipines Harajuku Fashion competition. She has been a guest at many lolita events and also modelled for her own Lolita inspired brand- Doll Delight.

As the brief stated the garment must be able to be worn by both females and males, I also looked at J.W. Anderson's 'MEN IN SKIRTS' catwalk collection to tie that aspect in. His Men In Skirts project was described as a streamlined take on androgyny. Some aspects were said to be pushed too far into femininity, although these were my favourite pieces of the collection. I enjoyed this part of the project, as I am a strong believer that fashion is genderless, and so finding a designer who worked with skirts for men was enjoyable for me. Also as I enjoy fashion drawings, I particularly enjoyed drawing my design onto a male template as well as a female.

By looking at these I gave my garment a unisex aspect.

My skirt design.

When it came down to the actual making of the garment I first started looking at methods to manipulate the paper into themes often found in Lolita garments, such as bows and ruffles, as are displayed on my experimentation page. I decided to include the bows in the final piece, as well as bows cut out from cardboard.

Again, as with textiles, I looked at Hayden Williams for influence for my fashion drawings, I feel like their work fully encapsulates the proportions and feel of fashion drawings, however I also appreciate that they incorporate the face of the person who's outfit they are designing.

Hayden Williams' costume design/fashion drawing for Beyoncé Knowles' tour.

My fashion drawing of what I wanted my skirt to look like - left uncoloured due to the fact that the paper I was using was white. Photo taken from my experimentation sheet.

I also decided again, to add another aspect of illustration to the project, as this was the area I wished to specialise in, to include some digital work, including a finished fashion drawing, and a drawing of the skirt I created on the mannequin.

My final sheet for Fashion, I did an A1 illustration of my created skirt on the dress form, working from the photos that I took of my garment.

I used black marker pens of various sizes, as well as thinly applied watercolour for this.

Evaluation:

Fashion was one of my favourite areas, despite not enjoying working in 3D very much I found the design aspect to be very me and I did not particularly mind creating the garment as there was not too much work involved in it. It tied in easily with my collected objects meaning I was inspired with ideas from the beginning in this particular area, and having done it after textiles I already had ideas of how to tie the two together along with how to integrate fashion drawings into my work, something that has interested me since high school. The research for this area appealed to me as it felt meaningful to the end result. I would have liked to take proper photographs of my final garment, perhaps modelled by both a male and a female to fit the brief, however due to time restraints I was unable to do this.

Photography

For photography I decided to look at the second group of collected items I had from over summer as it was hard to bring my Lolita items into a photography situation, and so I looked at my figure collection, particularly the vintage Gen. 1 My Little Pony toys that I had.

From this I decided to of course look at toy photographers, the first one being Slinkachu's 'Little People' project.

I felt this was a good starting point as we were going to take photos in town as part of our project, and that I could possibly make them interact with the surroundings. I also particularly enjoy how they look out of place as small clean figures when placed in dirty urban locations.

While looking for other photographers I came across Sasha's Lab (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashabratz/) who photographs figurines, particularly those of anime characters. Her work also appealed to me in that the figures were similar to some that I own, and the situations they were placed in were comedic or bright. I also like, with her work, that the background does not particularly detract from the objects, and in some of her work, it does not add to the 'situation' they are placed in and simply works as a frame for the figures, such as in the piece below.

'Even More Cheerful' using a figure of Hatsune Miku

The piece Hide and Go Seek is more reminiscent of Slinkachu's work, whereby they are interacting with the background, and it is definitely a part of the composition of the photo.

'Hide and Go Seek' - Haruhi and Kyon from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

I then went into town with a selection of My Little Pony figures and took pictures of them in various locations, originally focusing on looking at the object from different angles although eventually slipping it into certain situations such as with McDonalds left overs as seen in the contact sheet below.

I also experimented with taking pictures of the ponies in groups in the Photography Studio, however the SD card failed to load and those, as well as most of the other photos taken in town were erased. The remaining photos are below.

I liked the photos that focused on close up parts of the object, although the ones that looked at it as a whole in an urban environment tied in well with my artist influence.

Evaluation:

I feel that photography was perhaps my weakest area, due to the lost photos and the fact that I could not mount them properly/get them printed professionally. I also feel that they split up my portfolio weirdly, as the project was only presented on one sheet. I enjoyed working with the camera though, and learning how to take photos will come in useful in future projects. I felt that being able to decide the composition for yourself and how objects were positioned is a good skill to have for using photography for reference photos for future work therefore I very much enjoyed photography and felt it was a useful subject area on the rolling programme. I would possibly try to incorporate more than one object if I were to tackle this project again, and have more interaction between them as well as with the surroundings.

Textiles

For textiles we were briefed to make a repeating print, which automatically fit well with the objects I had collected to work from over the rolling project as a lot of my items were from Lolita brand 'Angelic Pretty' and many of their dresses focus on repeating border prints. The prints and dresses are designed by company's two main designers Maki and Asuka. As one of my collected items was a headbow with a print from Angelic Pretty on it (Milky Planet in Blue) I decided it was a good idea to focus on the prints by them.

Angelic Pretty Designers Maki and Asuka

A lot of the prints influenced my work in this project but I decided to show some of the most popular and notorious prints.

'Milky Planet' Print and Pink One Piece

Released in 2010

'Sugary Canival' Print and Jumper Skirts in Pink/Sax/Lavender

Released in 2009

'Honey Cake' Print and Mint One Piece

Released in 2011

 

These prints are then repeated all the way around the border of the dress, before release images like these above are released to show the print on different colourways (most commonly pastel colours like pink, yellow, mint, lilac, saxon blue, and also black)

So I created my own print using popular Lolita motifs common in items that I own - a theme common in Angelic Pretty's print dresses is cakes and desserts such as ice cream. I digitally created a section of print and copied it to give the repeating element. To then tie it in with this influence, I created a mock up of the dress with the print on, as well as an illustration of the dress being worn in the style of that.

My print

Print design put onto the dress, shown in multiple colourways upward (Lavender/Pink/Saxon Blue)

For a second artist influence, and as an example of the 'Fashion Template' style that I used. This particular example is by Hayden Williams, who draws many of these for Beyoncé Knowles' stage outfits. I felt this bought together other sections of the rolling programme such as Illustration (Vis Com) and Fashion. I enjoyed this as I felt it bought relevance to the work to show it in situ. I also liked that I was able to carry through my digital work which I have a preference for and the fact that I could make the subject more illustrative to match my interests.

My dress design on a template I illustrated in SAI (Lavender colourway)

Evaluation:

Textiles was one of my least favourite aspects of the rolling programme which is why I attempted to link it closely to illustration to turn it into an illustrative piece as opposed to working with patterns on the photocopier as many were advised to do. I feel that my own personal approach to the subject, however, made it flow better with the rest of my portfolio, especially with the fashion aspect as I integrated fashion drawings into it. If I had longer, or if I were to do the project again, I would spend longer refining the print itself, adding more detail to it, as I feel the colouring in particular was too simplified to match well with my influence as Angelic Pretty's prints are more vectored than digitally 'painted'.



Drawing and Observation

In drawing and observation we looked at different ways of drawing and looking at objects, such as using our left hands, drawing with a continuous line and with our eyes closed. The final objective was to create a piece of work including an object rotated through 180 degrees.

 For my object I had a figurine, although for my final piece I thought it was too complicated and removed the chair from the object, opting to just draw that instead.

The Figurine - 'Ciel Phantomhive' Nendoroid from 'Kuroshitsuji'

I worked mostly in pencil throughout this project as well as using charcoal and graphite to experiment with. The brief reminded me of a piece drawn by Davy of Every Day a Drawing ( http://everydayadrawing.com ), a blog which I follow, where he drew a fork from different angles. 

 Mar 24, 2013, Pencil and Paper (http://everydayadrawing.com/2013/03/24/drawings-of-forks/)

I love this piece for it's simplicity and sketchy quality. The roughness only adds and does not detract from the piece and I hoped to carry this look through in my experimentation sheet. However in my own final piece I wished for the items to flow together, as if it were a sequence of the chair falling, I also felt this would work best compositionally.

My Final Piece

Evaluation: 

This area was also one of my favourites, despite the focus on drawing from life and also the different methods of drawing, such as using your opposite hand and using scribbles which I am not particularly fond of. I feel like I had a strong outcome with good flow and composition, which is what I was aiming for. I am pleased with the object that I chose to use for this too, although it is slightly misplaced with the rest of my portfolio it is fairly strong as a stand alone piece, and even the experimental sheet felt strong to me. I feel like I could show my skill with pencil and shading.