Steampunk Project Evaluation

When the class handed in the Steampunk project, Jackie who works for

Phaze clothing, who gave the brief to us, came in and viewed the portfolios and shirts,

and initially she was taken aback from the wide range of different styles that were created but was very impressed.

Before she left, i asked for feedback on the shirt, and her advice was that even though

she loved the originality of the fan effect collar and all the ideas and aspects

were in the shirt, she thought that the buckles were too heavy for the fabric,

which could have changed the look of the shirt from making them thinner and using a different fabric

to create them, which i initially thought could be a problem.

She also suggested that the corset could have been moved to the front of the

shirt to make it more of a Victorian style as the corsets wouldn't

have necessarily be seen, the frill could have been in lace to match the shoulder heads

and the frill currently looks too 'soft', which she thought could be

improved from making the frill angular to match the collar.

Overall, i was pleased with the outcome of the project and feel that i have learnt alot.

Strengths -

• What strengths did I have that others don't? - My strengths were my enthusiasm for the topic, starting a new project and wanting to get the best out of it.
• What do people see as my strengths? - After talking to Jackie, who works for Phaze clothing, she seemed to think my strengths were the originality of the collar I created and parts of my portfolio. Also my time keeping was one of my strengths, finishing the project days before hand in.
• Which of my achievements am I most proud of? - I am most proud of completing the garment on time and was pleased with the end result of it, after weeks working on it and changing aspects of it.
• Which section of the work did I complete well? - I feel I created the
  shirt pattern well with little help and completed the shirt well, as the toile wasn't of a very good standard, and managed to turn it around and create a good final piece.

Weaknesses -

• What tasks did I avoid? - I mostly avoided the essay part of the project, as I feel I am more confident in my portfolio and garment constructing skills.
• What do others see as my weaknesses? - My weakness was again applying colour to the final flat sheets and feeling as though I had a good idea of what I was doing when making the garment, and still managing to sew parts wrong.
• What holds me back? - What held me back was the confidence to ask for help when creating the toile, which I overcame when constructing the final shirt.
• What are my negative work habits? - My negative work habits were not asking for help as much when creating the garment.

CAAD, week 8.

The past few weeks I have been continuing to carry out self-initiated work,

tracing around all four flats and added fabric swatches on them to create the final

flats for the first board! After the initial surprise of finishing the

first set of flats, i then went on to trace around the remaining

3 sets of flats to create flat board 2.

I still need to think about background ideas for the final layout of the boards. I will

keep the same palette throughout the two boards so they look part of a set

and flow well together.

For the other half of the project, I began to research into the

digital fashion illustrators from 1980-2000, where i seem to be finding

it difficult to collect images from the 1980's and 90's.

Overall, im finding the work successful as im able to do the work

quite quickly and have a good idea on what im doing!

Flat board 2

Final Steampunk Shirt

After many weeks of pattern cutting and days in the sewing room

I have finally completed my Steampunk shirt!

It features a jobot frill, cog shaped buttons, a fan effect collar, lace shoulder heads,

buckles around the arms and a corseted back.

Overall, I am pleased with the end result as the shirt turned out very successful and fits my model.

Shirt Front

Shirt Back

Cog Buttons

Buckles

Corset

CAAD, week 6.

After the first few weeks, I now find it easy to work

as an individual, building my confidence with the CAAD techniques.

I have been carrying out self-initiated work, working on my final flats,

tracing around them and adding my fabric swatches that i will use

when coming to complete my final Steampunk shirt.

At the beginning, I had difficulty remembering how to do certain

aspects of illustrator, but soon overcame the problems with help

from the tutor Gemma, and began adding the swatches succcessfully.

Im still unsure on how to shrink the pattern down to the correct size

I will carry on doing the flats at home after downloading the free trial of

Adobe Illustrator to help understand the subject better and create more

traced flats to add swatches to for the next session.

Steampunk Boards Development

After having a tutorial on my Steampunk portfolio work, there are a few

changes which i need to make to my boards, such as

adding more drawings, larger annotation, and using cream imagery to

link to my cotton, lace and leather fabrics for my final shirt.

I also tried to create a 'package', having a common denominator

on each board, linking them together, which i decided would be my key

drawing, having the same style writing and laying each board out in the same way.

The inspiration board as a whole worked well, so i decided to lay out the rest of my

boards in this way. On the fabric board, i chose cream and brown colours and the fabric

im using for my final shirt to do manipulations on and i changed around the colours on the colour

board to help create more of a set of boards. To create the final design board, i included

the key drawing, flats, fabrics, imagery and matching annotation to complete the

overall look.

Inspiration Board

Fabric Board

Colour Board

Final Design Board

CAAD, week 4.

Over the initial stress of not being able to figure out why my image was

going blank when I was tracing around the flat, I learnt that I

need to press the 'no fill' button so that i can still see my original image underneath.

I also learnt not to trace the whole outside of the flat, but to do each section

individually and create a new layer for each one and use a thin black line to go

around the flat.

I learnt more about the brush tools and how to thicken and add stitch lines

to the garments and how to add block colour and my own fabric

swatches into the flats and how to shrink down the pattern.

To help further with my pen tool and brush techniques, I traced around half of a

model to create a tank top and learnt how to mirror the other half

of the image to create a symmetrical drawing and how to curve the lines.

I found these last few lessons quite successful compared to the first few sessions as

I now find it easy to learn the techniques.

AD114 SWOT Analysis

Strengths -

• What strengths did I have that others don't? - When starting the project and course after doing an Art Foundation, I found that I had a better understanding of the project and how to lay out moodboards and create flats in the right way compared to the other students. I had also done a lot of work on the subject so knew it well.
• What do people see as my strengths? - After getting my assessment sheet on the project, I found that my strengths were in my sketchbook, collecting a wide range of research to fuel my imagination throughout the rest of the project.
• Which of my achievements am I most proud of? - I would say I am most proud of the final figures I created, getting the silhouette and shape right as beforehand, I felt this was a weakness.
• Which section of the work did I complete well? - I think the work I completed well was the final flats and two moodboards as I feel these are my strengths.

                                                              Weaknesses -

• What tasks did I avoid? - I mostly avoided doing the body blanks and figures as I feel I'm not as confident doing them as other parts of the project.
• What do others see as my weaknesses? - My weaknesses in the project were applying colour to the final figures, as I originally liked it when I first tried it out, but then it didn't turn out the same when putting it on the final sheets.
• What holds me back? - What held me back was my lack of confidence with it being the first project in the course.
• What are my negative work habits? - My negative work habits were spending the most time on the moodboards rather than the final design pages.

AD114 Portfolio Development Project Feedback

For my first FdA fashion college project i was asked to produce an A3 sketchbook, portfolio

and file of work demonstrating what is required from the industry, developing

on my research, drawing, design development, fashion

illustration and portfolio presentation. During the summer i was asked to

pick a theme of my own choice and construct a sketchbook of ideas ready for when

the course was about to begin. At this time i decided to look into 'Under the Sea', which

was inspired by the late Alexander McQueen's spring/summer 'Plato's Atlantis' 2010 collection.

To start the project i created a sketchbook of ideas and designs from looking at a variety of research

on the theme. I also created 2 moodboards, muse boards, shop reports, design development,

final illustration and flat boards, all relating to the theme of under the sea.

MoodBoard

MoodBoard

Muse Board

Shop Report

Shop Report

Design Development

Final Illustration

Flat Board

The feedback i got for the whole project was 65% which i was very pleased with

and the sketchbook was shown to have been created with great care, there was a good

amount of primary and secondary research which fuelled my imagination when designing giving me a 

good range of options to persue in the design stage and the work was annotated appropriatley

highlighting my thoughts throughout the project. The work was also said to have clearly

identified a good progression of drawing and i was starting to show my own fashion style.

Although i did get alot of positive feedback, to improve it i could have added more fabric samples and

annotated overviews on the boards, practice my media techniques to create a more realistic

fabric representation, which i agree with as i found to struggle doing this and to improve upon the final

illustration boards so that they sit well together.

But overall i definatley enjoyed the project!

Design Illustrations

I have recently stumbled across http://www.mydeadpony.com/, full of

design illustrations by a self taught illustrator, which

uses scribbles, patterns, layering and hints of colour to create some very

beautiful and inspiring illustrations.
When doing my own final illustrations in future, i will most definately be
looking at these for some needed inspiration!

Introduction to AD107, CAAD Project.

Over the past few weeks we have been introduced to the new project alongside

the Steampunk project, which is CAAD - digital skills.

For this project, were are asked to create 2 A3 colour digital fashion illustration

boards containing the final colour, fabric swatches and background. I also need

to keep a daily diary of my time in the CAAD sessions to show how i am developing over the

week with my new skills. With this I also need to collect 20 images of digital

fashion illustrations from 1980-2000 and comment on how digital illustration has

changed over this period of  time and then create an essay from this research.

During the first lesson I found CAAD to be very difficult as I have only ever

used it for a few weeks during my Art Foundation course.

We were taught how to use the basic techniques of Adobe Illustrator, how to

fill colour and use the pen tool, which is neccessary for doing anything on illustrator.

In the first lesson I was practising how to use the pen tool, by drawing freely and

doing pictures of myself to help build my confidence with the tool.

I also learnt how to scan and do more pen tool techniques and completed a basic

illustrator and pen tool quiz online to test how well i already know the subject.

For my Steampunk project i was asked to create layout sheets of initial designs, which I

then took and scanned into the computer ready to trace them up with the pen tool.

When trying to trace the first flat up I traced around its original shape successfully

but im still not sure why the whole picture has went blank inside the tracing. Help!