Fashion & Textile
2016 Foundation CMPT Y2 Yun-Hsuan Mai
Final Evaluation What was your strongest work in the rotation? Why was it successful? My strongest work in the fashion and textile rotation , was the white background photographs. These are a style that I am currently interested. I think they were successful because even if I was challenging tasks that I am unfamiliar with , I can still embed my own style into those tasks. From my point of view , being able to obtain your own personality , style and persists are vital to a creative person. It is these qualities that defines us and our work. What was your weakest work? Why was it less successful? How could you improve your work? The A1 design sheet was the weakest work out of all the tasks in this rotation. This is mainly because I wasn’t confident in drawings and didn’t completely understood the objective and steps. At last with the tutors approval I was allowed to do it digitally. But then I found a more influential mistake. As the source of the images was from the Internet I had control over what image I use . This seems like an advantage but it limited the possibility for the collage. If I was to do it again I would research how to make a digital collage first. Sketch an idea then search for source images. Have there been any unexpected outcomes in your work? The result of the fashion film was unexpected , because I only thought of the multi split screen concept on tuesday. Which was two days before hand in for assessment of Thursday. I didn’t even take proper showers in thoses days. Before I finally finished on thursday afternoon it seems like an impossible task. As I just started learning aftereffect in the first year and wasn’t particularly familiar with it yet. What role has drawing played within the development of your work? Drawing isn’t a skill that I am confident with , but I understand it is the most fundamental skill that an art student should practice. During the life drawing exercise , I struggled to arrange the form of the human body , and found more difficulties in deciding the right proportion.
What artists did you research and how were they relevant to your work? I researched the work of Anish Kapoor , and was inspired by the works that was strongly symbolic. A piece of art that can reflect the surrounding environment and the current generation. For the “white background photographs ” that I started making , I am aiming to from them it to Frosted glass , just like what Nobuyoshi Araki has said about photography. They should be frosted glass , that can both be see through and reflect. Does your journal reflect your rotation visually and does it analyse your development throughout? I used my journal mainly for planning the fashion film , as the multi speclt screens required detailed planning. The journal reflected my development and decision through the making process. The visuals are posted on blogs , they documented the rotation and was clearly dated. But for the next rotation , I shall do more analysing. What skills does the work from this rotation demonstrates? The courage to make bold design and experimenting with hands-on task. At the beginning of the rotation, I was slightly worry that I won’t learn anything related to my current interest. And was varied using charcoal and making collages will be a wasted of time. I was overwhelmed by the fact that ten months before applying for university , I will have to spend eight week learning unrelated skills. But it turns out that “transferable skills” are real , and most importantly it give us a chance to experience many acept of Art. It is true that after entering university , I will never touch fashion , fine arts or 3D. It would be a shame in life , which is obviously more important than unviersity. Also , having wider knowledge can extend our imagination. Some one who like photography shouldn’t only be interested in photography. Their should be context and contextual knowledge in them. It’s what makes your work stand out. We will possibly , be very busy once we entered university. If we don’t experiment with our surrounding , when will we have time? How has the rotation help you in deciding your specialism pathway choice? This rotation introduced us to the different area of fashion & textile . My grandfather owns a business of industrial sewing machine , and my mother organize a studio that supports students studying fashion design in Taiwan. My position was somewhere near fashion , but it has always been blurry. Through this rotation , I now can briefly see. I know I will never be determined to do fashion design for living , the way I do for digital media. But I am interested in fashion photography.
Fast track Fashion Drawing
Using a visualisation technique you will explore a series of drawing approaches responding imaginatively and without hesitation to design. Exploration of collage, mixed media and white out Illustration technique
Today is the first day of our foundation rotation. My first subject area is Fashion Textile. We did four fast track drawings using visualisation technique. Personally , I prefer working digitally. But I still enjoy the freedom of drawing on paper. Each fast track drawing was given a specific material as inspiration or approach of drawing. We drew on layout paper placed on top of printed images of models or natural organism. It allow us to use our imagination within a structure. Fashion can include a wide range of areas. It can be inspired by anything , from a single word to political events and a lot more. I am particularly intrigued in fashion promotion and fashion film. As it related closer to my current area of interest. There is a dramatic difference in workload between my first year in CMPT and this year. This year is obvious a vital year in an art students study life. I do enjoy working in fast pass and aiming to produce more work. This year I would be working in unfamiliar areas. Hope I can push my way through and keep up to date with everything till the very end. Also I certainly hope I keep my style and how I am in any given situation.
Sewing Induction It is strange for me not knowing how to operate a sewing machine. Because my family owns a business in industrial sewing machine - Siruba. My grandfather is a professional in designing sewing machine , and my mother owns a studio that supports university students major fashion design. I always wanted to learn the skill of operating the sewing machine in order to connect closer to my family. Therefore this induction was really helpful by giving me this chance.
In the life drawing lesson today , we used different techniques to improve our drawing skills. This was not the exercises was difficult , as I don’t have much practice in
The whole exercise forced us to observe the human body , and define each angle and cur
For the first drawing , we used charcoal and focused on the direction of lines an
The second one was a free drawing. We were allowed to use any material we are most comfortable with. I used m body carefully enough and half of the body was covered. The second
The third drawing was strongly focusing on proportions. Same as the last drawing. These two activities sugges define the lin
e first time doing life drawing. Therefore drawing a human body won’t a problem mentally. But the drawing drawing and drawing in large scale made it even harder.
rves. It wasn’t an easy task , but after a day of work we could already see us improving.
nd weight on the body. Each small drawing had a limited time around 10 mins.
my black pen and did the one on the right , witch did not turned out well. Mainly because I want observing the one was drawn by pencil. This was slightly better then the other one.
st more details then the others. We used charcoal to make out the important points on the body. Then carefully nes and curves.
Here is the five patterns created during the Digital Textile workshop. It was an interesting activity , I lea
arnt some technics regarding making digital patterns and it introduced us to a new way to process images.
This exercise aims to develop fashion design idea inspired by nature form. We were asked to draw the natural form in different style and scale. Then place them on drawing of body figure from magazine pages to create new designs. From my understanding this process allow beginners to create bold and brave design in abstract style. I wasn't really confident with drawing , therefor failed in this task. I then created a digital collage using photoshop. It is a woman dressed in maids clothing and the written world means fake. With an every fantasy background. I wouldn't say it's a fashion design , as it is just a digital collage. But it relates to the concept of fashion film , because it uses the body and clothing to describe a concept.
Fahion Photography Work Shop
Today is the first day of filming our fashion film. The whole process was very enjoyable. I do enjoy taking photos all day long , but that also means I end up speaking so little throughout the day. There was four CMPT students in my group , we spent the day taking footages and still images together. At first I thought the project will be entirely individual work. Therefore I only took stills images that I had already planned on taking. Then I found out all the CMPT are sharing the same footage , only the editing will be done individually. Yesterday I came up with an “documentary� idea for this fashion film. Named: Fashion Film - My Confusion. This will surround the confusion and wandering process of choosing future pathway and finding yourself in specifically assigned tasks. I dont know if I will be able to complet this film in four days. From this point , it seems like an impossible task. But I shall to my best.
Footage shared from classmates
Footage from past collection
Footage filmed for this project
Photos by classmates
On friday the CMPT students were given 360 degree camera to experiment with. We will be starting the filming for fashion film on Monday.Virtual Reality experiences is currently an extremely popular trend. I can imagine , in the future , most games and movies will be made into virtual reality. This once again shorten the distance between human imagination and reality. It allows a dramatically wider freedom to communicate. This photo is one of the 360 camera. Through an mobile app and VR glasses it creates a virtual reality space. Although the outcome might have some issue , for example exstorited or repeated parts. It is every easy to recapture the moments atmosphere and the whole sense of space. It is amazing how we as art students and experiment with this new technology and actually produce our own work from it. I am not sure how it will work if we want the VR footage to be in our fashion film. Should the entire video be in VR format or‌.
The title of this experimental fashion film is “ My Confusion “. Fashion and Textile was the first rotation of my foundation year. I was still confused about how to learn during the eight rotation week , about the system that seems to be not negotiable and university application. I wanted to create work that reflect my current situation and thoughts , I wanted to be a formula that is put into the education system , then come out with an answer of my own style. Therefore I chose to reflect my confusion using the experimental film. The experimental film experimented with multiple split screen. The mask of the split screen is created in Illustrator to form a long sequence of storyboard. I figured out this method myself , considering this as the correct and fastest way to make a split screen moving image. This was truly a challenge for me , this 58 second film was made in three days. It was a huge challenge both contextually and technically. Although after few week I will look back and despise it , I am now still glad with the final outcome. To improve this , I would increase the duration. Deepen the concept and create a more considered background music by myself. Till now , I am still using loyalty free music founded online after the whole film is finished. One area that I have improved is that I did consider the focus point of the imagery in every scene. In my previous project , I only consider the message that was intended to be pass through , and most of the times too much message in one scene and it is difficult to tell where to look , and there isn't enough given time to understand all the given message. This time , I specifically focused on this improvement , hope it did came across.
Edited still images
Created the maze illustration
Created story board mask
Animation
Combined first and second half of the film Added audio
The story boards is splited in two part due to the limited length of the art boards in Illustrator.
Royalty free stocked footage found online was used for the repersentation of different pathway rotation and The Statue of Liberty. Each footage was classified by differnt storyboard numbers.
In After Effect the footage was stored organizedly. The composition is also splited into two parts and combined in the third composition. The ai. storyboard layer (Labled red ) will be placed on top of the corresponding footage file .jpg or .mov Then Alpha Matt will be applied to the .jpg or .mov layer. Which will responce to the .ai layer above. Making the .aithe mask. And this layer will also be parented to the .ai layer. Therefore it will move with the .ai layer mask and I will only have to animate the .ai layer.
Two parts of the film was combined in Premiere Pro because it was difficult to combined them in After effect. Slight changes was made during this part of the making process. And sound was affed. The sound of a soft piano music and the sound of ticking clock was combined together. The time symbolized the quick passing time that is pushing us towards the unknown.
https://youtu.be
e/p4zzFPbSR_w