I
wanted to capture the shapes and patterns of the church through a motion of
film. I have layered different clips of the shoots I took at the Bristol cathedral
to create a moving repetitive pattern. I did this to create my own inspiration
of how I can create different designs within my collection. I also want to
develop this film into a projection and film a model with a white garment as
the projection of the different shapes and patterns project and move across her
body. I will be doing this so I can get a better understanding how the prints
can be displayed across the body form and onto a garment.I have used free royalty music for this film
from Moby’s website as for my more developed and important films I will be collaborating
with Oisin who writes his own music but this process of film I have worked on
now is just for my own research and concept
Through my second year project I have based
my print designs and drawing on modern or historical architecture. I will be
carrying on this concept but through historical architecture of church vaults.
I have chosen this concept as I have always been inspired by church vaults and
have felt that I could create dynamic and rhythmical designs with this type of
concept. I have been to the Bristol cathedral and I was able to take some
photographs of the ceiling. I wanted the capture the different shapes, lines
and patterns the vault demonstrates, this will be applicable for when I start
drawing or designing from these photographs as the shapes demonstrate complex structures.
This week I focused on pen drawing different types of flowers. I spent
all week on these two drawings. I wanted to make these designs as detailed and
life-like as possible. I looked into science books and books of flowers from
the book shelf at Mirjam Rouden for inspiration of designing flowers. As this
week they were getting ready so sell their collection to somewhere abroad groups
of interns including myself were told to cut fabric digital samples ready for their
sale. From looking at the new collections it has inspired me to create designs
that are complex and dynamic.
In the second week of my internship I was told to do more maintenance
work. That involved cleaning screens with a water jet. This was quite long and
tiring work but through this process it has helped me to understand how to
clean a screen properly when taking off the old print design and the chemicals
that are used to clean the screen until completely see through. I was then told
by Cindy to focus on more intricate flower drawings with colour and tones. The
drawings that I do will then be scanned into the computer and the team of
designers will mock up print designs with my and other intern’s drawings. I
feel like this process of drawing has helped me to create more intricate and
refined work that I want to create in the process of my degree work.
Over this summer I interned at Mirjam Rouden Textile design studio.
Located in East London, Bethnall Green. Mirjam Rouden is a textile designer specialising
in Print design and she is well known for her digital and colour discharge
prints. Mirjam Rouden’s prints have been known to sell at Inigo which is partnered
with Premiere vision. Mirjam Rouden’s prints are internationally sold to
countries such as Italy, Paris and the US which gives Mirjam and her team the
privilege to travel around the world. Her print designs have been known to feature
in companies such as Diane Von Furstenberg, Banana Republic & Maladrino.
In my first week of interning I was expected to
provide my portfolio so Cindy one of Mirjam’s head designers could identify my
strengths in designing, drawing and digital skills.So this week I was directed to focus on
drawing florals with black ink and black pencil and go on errands on the tube
to get designs printed onto tracing paper made for screen printing. I enjoyed
this process of work as I was able to work on my drawing skill and take time on
drawings to create perfect floral shapes. I was also told by Cindy to work on
small drawings of flowers onto tracing paper, she wanted me to work on tracing
paper so it is easier for the team to make printing screens with the tracing
paper. I found the work enjoyable as I feel I my strengths lie within drawings
and designing.
I had the privilege
of seeing the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty Collection at the V&A in
London. The collections were overwhelmingly beautiful and striking. There was
limited involvement in the exhibition as no photographs were to be taken and no
sketching either. The exhibition was also very crowded and you were only allowed
to view his work for a limited amount of time. Besides that his themes within
his collection were breathtaking and there was an almost magical atmospheric
look to his clothes. His earliest work demonstrated a raw and edgy culture to
his work.
What I found most striking
was his Romantic Nationalism and his Platos Atlantic collection.
His Romantic Nationalism
concept came from his Scottish ancestry. The room looked regal and majestic and
the classical music in the background complemented his work. I discovered he
first used tartan in his Highland Rape collection but soon came back to it 11
years later in his beautiful collection called ‘The Widows Of Culloden’. This
collection was a much softer and less aggressive rendering than his Highland
Rape collection.
Platos Atlantic
collection was to the end of his exhibition. I find this work inspiring and creative. The
narrative behind this collection was his most fantastical concept. The
collection is about if the ice caps melt in the future and the seas have risen. The dress collection represents what we as a society
would look like if man had evolved under water. The dresses are presented as an
army of fishlike creatures, a sort of hybrid animal alien form. Within this
collection in my opinion he has been able to master the quality of digital
printing and there all derived from natural organisms. From seeing this incredible collection I have
been inspired to create narratives in my designs and prints. I think with a narrative
to my work it will provide a better understanding and thoughtful process within
my collection. I also inforce film within my project so I can identify the
narrative with my work though fashion film making.
I found it most exciting working on the
fashion film for Rianna as I was able to have complete direction to howthe model should move and perform with the
pages, I also had the freedom to use dynamic editing shots with creating the
film. Making this film for Rianna has helped me develop my editing skills with
rewinding clips and mirroring shots. It has also given me the opportunity to make
fashion films on a professional level. The Music is by Oisin Baber and this
music was specifically designed for this film.
Working for Rianna Phillips was exciting
and I felt like I was able to claim my own independence interning for her. She
directed me to create two films for her new collection. This was a big
achievement for me as I specialize my work with fashion film making. The first
film to be created is a behind the scenes film that me and my friend Sion (a
film student) both worked on this part and filmed the process of the
photography shoot throughout the day. I wanted to capture as much as I could
from the hair and makeup to the direction of photography. I set both cameras to
high brightness setting and a high resolution as from looking at Rianna’s work
she has a very clean, crisp look to her collections. I edited the film to show
shadows between each clip I did this to show how time of the day goes quickly
whist filming. Below is the behind the scenes film I have filmed and edited.
The music is by Oisin Baber a student in Bristol that I was able to collaborate
with through a connection of my sister. He wrote this music to fit perfectly to
the different shots.
I came across Lucy Madeline
Watson’s work on the second floor of the degree show, she is a student that
studies Animation and illustration. I choose not to write a review on another
print designer because I was drawn and inspired by Watson’s imagery and motion
picture. Watson had displayed canvases of imagery of water that she filmed at a
local aquarium called Liquid Indigo and a moving image piece called Cube
Projection Mapping based on the poem 'Aquatic Nocturne' by Sylvia PlathThis piece was inspired by the
line: Deep in liquid indigo. I was drawn to the mood and motion of her work.
Her film was complex and well thought out and identified as moving shapes that
I found therapeutic and interesting.
Along with my print designs
I make fashion films as an advertisement of my print designs constructed in a
creative way, I could see a correlation of her theme of work to how I work with
my films. I enjoyed the complexity of her creative motion film, I found her
work to be exciting as a moving design that morphs into different colours. Her
film and her canvas pieces had a mood that gave off a therapeutic approach. In
my film work I wish to make my viewers feel something while they are watching
the film. While watching her film it dazzled me with the different movements[AP1] and colours and she has truly developed an exciting
piece.
Watson has taken a simple
context such as water and made it complex. Her editing skills are advanced with
motion picture editing and I feel that she has outstanding work by making her
motion picture look like a final finished print design that entails movement. I
found her calming blue colours in her canvas work were presented well and her
mirroring work to be intelligent and precise.
From the Degree show this
piece of work stuck with me the most and I wish to create a film that will
stick with people and I want them to be visually moved by my fashion films. I
feel that Lucy Madeline Watson’s work has inspired me to create a complex film
that entails moving designs. I found it interesting how she displayed her film
as a 3D cube and that she thought outside of the box, to display her work. I
want to create the same approach in my film work.
When I came across Elain’s work (print
design student for high fashion) I was mostly impressed by her row of print
designs. She had a rack of carefully prepared prints and images supporting her
designs and a photograph of her designs on a garment. I was impressed by her
collection of luminous colour print designs. She chose her colours well for
each print design and had made all of her prints look unique, with a correlating
theme through each design. From my observation she had playfully created prints
from her own painting and photographs and had mirrored them to create final
corresponding designs. I identified her designs as a floral theme enriching in
repeated print and print placement. Elain Mair has the ability to take an
organic raw object such as her floral designs and manipulate the object,
transforming the object into a modern futuristic design using bright complementary
tones, complex lines and edgy shapes. I
am inspired how she is able to take an organic object and make it look exciting
and bold. I find her drawing and designs crazy and expressive but there is
still a high quality of profession and neat craft. I was mostly impressed by
her business card and her logo that was displayed on the front. It had
definitely showed contemplation and careful thought. I found Mair’s work to be
a high standard and I felt that her work did not represent a work of a student
but a work of a designer that works for a high street company such as Topshop.
I find her work to be that of a professional designer work, her identifiable
skills of Photoshop and Illustrator are diverse. She used good range of primary
resources and her theme of work authenticated as electric and energetic. In
Mair’s work I found that she is able to take organic natural colours and
collage theme with futuristic metallic colours. From seeing her work at the degree
show I was inspired by her ideas of taking the organic and natural and making
it manmade I wish to demonstrate a strong theme in my work that show a contrast
of two different ideas that can be created into a correlation. I was also
impressed by her bold metallic colours that crafted her work as exciting and
vibrant I wish to use bold vibrant colours that transforms my designs into a
concept that is electrifying. For my degree show in a year to come I wish to
develop my Photoshop and Illustrator skills to as a high level like Elain Mair.
I was attracted to Grace Davies’s
(print design student for high fashion) work at the 3rd year degree
show, her work demonstrates a theme of materiality and an investigation of new
and innovative materials used in architecture and design. She demonstrates
‘Manipulated Materials’ I find this concept inspiring and diverse. Grace both had a look-book and designs on the wall, what had
drawn me to her work was the materials such as foam and wood upon the floor to
me this signified original thinking and a bold but confident statement to
demonstrate along with her designs. I am inspired by her quality and complexity
of her print designs, in my designs I wish to work as Grace Davies does within
her highly complex detailed print designs. Grace Davies’s look-book was
outstanding in my opinion she had taken the concept of future forecasting and
developed it to her strong ideas with material and colour. I was attracted by
her bold colour and shapes that she produced in her look book it made her
portfolio exciting. She demonstrates high quality concepts within her look-book
by mixing drawing, pictures of materials and print designs to create a collage
that almost tells a story about her development of her work. Her
consumer is aimed at a high fashion audience and I find it highly intelligent
how she is able to demonstrate raw materials and manipulated them to a high
fashion quality. As I wish to show my process of
design through film I feel that Grace’s work has inspired to demonstrate modern
designs that take upon the future of fashion.
It is clear that she has experience in fashion and textiles and she is
inspired by exciting shapes and colour.
I find her designs almost therapeutic to the eye as she uses
complementary colours that show a rhythmical balance in her designs. In my work I wish to manifest bold and
complex ideas that demonstrate a modern theme. I could see a connection in
Grace’s work that shows a process that is modern and edgy approach in her
designs that I feel is similar in my process of work. Davies has inspired me to
create a look-book along with my final designs and a film that demonstrates
movement, and rhythm within my concept. I was impressed by the hard work that
had gone into her degree work and her work showed thinking outside the box and
that is how I wish to approach my degree work in the future.
The most influential part of my visit to New York was visiting
the studios of the company of Flavor Paper in Brooklyn. Entering into the
studio, the appearance of the inside the building was exciting and dramatically
shaped. Flavor Paper is now a modern print studio that just started out as a
small print house in New Orleans.
The company Flavor Paper was discovered by
young designers in Oregon just days before the equipment and designs were about
to be destroyed by the then owner called Ted. From the visit I noticed the
print designs had a very pop art nesh to them that were inspired by Andy Warhol.
The Andy Warhol series is a collaboration with ‘The Andy Warhol X Foundation
for the Visual Arts’. Flavor paper has access to Andy Warhol’s work with the exception
of his wallpaper. Flavor Paper honours and develops the icon Warhol to create
amazing imagery, ranging from rare to iconic paintings, silkscreen prints and
film stills as inspiration for the collection.
What I noticed with their print designs is they are able to
renew old imagery as a repeating print or by using bold acid colour. From what
I gathered from the visit they try to create print wall designs that are not
yet on the market. These are designs that don’t fit into any sort of audience
but they stand as a unique design market. The visit illustrated to me that it
is possible to create your own designs without an audience and that their
designs are entirely what they wish to create. I find this inspiring and I think
there are very few companies that design with what they want to design without
having an audience as a base. This line of design I think relates to my
practice as I found the design themselves visually interesting and I felt they
had a fine art quality that I try to reflect in my own print work. I was
interested in the concept of creating different smells and infusing them into their
wallpaper hence naming it Flavor Paper. I was inspired by the use of using old machinery
and hand screen printing to create modern designs. It showed that by using hand
screen techniques they take great pride, passion and care into their designs.
Visiting Flavor Paper has made me think differently in that by adding something
different to their print designs they are creating their own market such as the
flavor in the paper.
I think with my understanding of my practice it is
important for me to create something different with my designs that will make my designs stand out and have a unique quality
to them. Visiting Flavor Paper has helped me and inspired me to create designs
that are not on the market yet. My visit there was so influential that in the
future I wish to be working in a studio company that create and develop their
own designs in such a different manner.
In conclusion, I feel that I have succeeded with the outline of my
proposal. I have strived to experiment with different techniques and ideas that
reflect my initial ideas. The idea of Thailand and architecture originated from
when I travelled to Thailand last year and had the privilege of visiting
inspiring and exciting places such as temples in Bangkok, which I had
documented in photographs that helped me fuse ideas of drawing and print
designs. I combined my work with architecture as I felt my intentions project
was unfinished and I wanted to carry on the idea of using buildings as a
template for my vibrant bold designs. I took photographs of architecture and
nature around Manchester and developed my work with drawings to stimulate a
source of primary research. To document my drawings, I constructed two films
showing the creation of my visual work. Combining my drawings of Manchester and
Thailand did not initiate until the digital process of my work was underway. I
used the Photoshop page as a blank canvas and was able to blend both ideas of
design into a developing process to create work that will complement the idea
of using Manchester and Thailand. By doing this, I felt that I managed to
create abstract unique designs that reflected my primary research and my
reference colours.
For my live project, Bradford Textiles, I feel I could have spent more
time developing my designs and research into the idea of Thai print. I tried my very best with the limited
amount of time I had to work on my designs. As I have explained in my blog, I
used some of my work from my personal project, such as my Thai inspireddrawings and created a collection of more
Thai drawings to channel into my work. My inspirations and audience are the
same as my personal project and this final design is represented for high
fashion. Out of all of my test samples, I have chosen this as my final design
as I feel it represents my initial research and primary ideas in my work.
I have distinguished that this work provides a high fashion market as I
tried to construct refined designs that have a complex structure. The characteristics
of my designs exude a fine art, pattern to my work. With my Manchester primary
research, I have tried to fabricate designs that are diametrically different
from my primary research. I have accomplished this by creating bold edgy
concepts of shape and colour in my work and to offer a high fashion quality to
my designs. Fashion, print and film fashion designers such as Nicolas Jebran, Marykatrantzou,
Nick Knight and Mark Mawson are four of my main inspirations as I have
reflected their visually striking and unique concepts of work and try to
channel it through my designs and fashion film. My main reason in constructing
my designs is to instil a vibrant, outlandish and exciting theme to my work
that is inspired by qualities such as the 60s, David Bowie and Andy Warhol.
These three concepts have been my source of consistent inspiration to develop
an intoxicating, expressive objective to my work. I feel that my work is for an
upmarket clientele with individual aspirations on clothes design that
counteract a statement and revolution like quality. The print designs will be
best suited for fashion films as I have displayed in my work and high fashion
catwalk clothes, such as elaborate dresses that correlate with Nicolas Jebran.
I
feel that I have reflected my proposal. The construction of making a fashion
film was a process of practice by creating a test film. The test fashion film
gave me an insight and practice into creating a refined quality of work. I have
successfully crafted a collection of six final print designs. I chose to keep
my print designs as a minimum to six as the time planning for both filming and editing
can be particularly lengthy.
In conclusion, I made a fashion inspired fashion film, which consisted
of a collaboration with my print designs projected onto a model layered with
ink dripping in water and including my reference colours. This film was aimed
to construct how my print designs will appear on garments. I chose to create an
animation-like quality to my print designs as the projection moved across the
model's body to show how the shapes of my print designs can construct different
ideas of observation across the white garment. The model created elegant
movements with her body representing the soft but dominating like structures of
my print designs. I chose the song Stella Marris by Moby for its atmospheric
quality. The sound and rhythm of the music also complemented the model's
movements and my print designs. I chose to do a film to show how my prints can come to life, instead of having a static like
structure to my designs. This music in the film was to create a dramatic,
almost therapeutic atmosphere. It is also highlighted in my blog that all the
music incorporated is royalty free and selected from Moby’s website. The
inspiration for my final film was from a variety of films from ShowStudio, which
is a company that advertises fashion, print and art. This is what I have tried
to demonstrate in my film.
This experience of creating two projects simultaneously has been a
challenge but I feel it has offered a great insight into what it may be like
working in the print fashion industry and how timekeeping to deadlines is so
important in this field of work. I have tried to reflect on my proposal and
evaluate my creative process throughout these two projects. The challenges I
have experienced have motivated me to sculpture my projects into the best
refined like quality I can achieve. If I was to change any aspect of my
projects, I would spend more time on my live project by digitally printing my
designs onto fabric give the impression of what they would look like on
garments. For future projects, I want to expand my ideas of film and work with
projection in the outside environment instead of in a studio room. This would
be a great challenge due to certain variables being less easy to control and
monitor. However, I would relish the challengeto take a risk in constructing something very different and to tackle
more difficult concepts of filming.
There were some difficulties
when filming the final film as the memory card in which I was using was faulty,
which meant I had to film on a different night. This was frustrating as I am
aware of the importance of timekeeping when filming and editing. Throughout the process of my final film, I
have made some changes. I recorded paint stripping into water and the colours
represented my colour reference. My inspiration for dripping paint in water was
a photographer by Mark Mawson. He also makes short films of ink disbursing into
water that gives the effect of the ink dancing and performing in what looks
like the open space. I want to take this idea of showing how paint can form and
construct different motions through water and layers. My aim is for my print
designs to give a visually exciting effect to my work.
On this occasion, the setting
up was quite easy for the film. As I made a test shoot for my final film, it
was somewhat easier to set up the film and I felt significantly more confident
directing and filming the process. For this filming, I got my model (Molly) to
wear white shorts with no logo because the Fred Perryskirt I was using had a logo
on the front. The process of filming for the final film took quite a long time
as I wanted everything to be perfect and ensure I had sufficient material to
work with when editing.
Music
I have decided to keep the
music that I was using for the test shoot for the final film. I feel that the
song Stella Maris matches perfectly to the mood of the film. For future film
making, I will try and find a music artist or DJ to collaborate with.
Editing
The editing process of my
final film was more complex as I decided to put my reference of colours and
paint dripping into water as well as my designs. I used different techniques of
fading in and out of movement clips and layering and mirroring. I have layered
the paint in water with the film of my print designs fading into my reference
colours to space out the film and to give the audience of my film time to look
at each print. I think the fading in and out of different clips worked well in
my film. However, this process added a significant time delay to the editing
process overall as it took time to learn how to fade in and out of film clips.
