BA Hons Fashion Design (Year 3)
I plan to use bright, vibrant colours as my main colour scheme. I want to explore different fabric textures with a soft look and feel such as; velvet, ribbed cottons, jersey and fleece etc. I will definitely be choosing materials that are comfortable to wear and fairly lightweight are perfect for exercising and similar activities to attract my target market.
I found the most perfect colours on WGSN! This gave me so much inspiration of beautiful bold colours that also compliment each other really well.
I created two quick storyboards with my initial ideas of fabric patterns, colours and silhouette shapes. I know that I definitely want my designs to be inspired by the 1970s and I plan on focusing on the use of shapes like circles and geometric shapes, I also really like orange and anything quite vibrant.
Earlier today I attended a talk by two different brands. The first one was a business set up by two sisters; they bought a place in Cardiff and set up a studio space
From what I created in the draping workshop I really liked the idea of lots of folds to create a top. I decided that this just looked too elegant and almost too restricting for what I want to make. So I came up with the idea of going in the opposite angle and creating a top using pleats instead. I think this gave it a modern twist and made it look better in my opinion.
I am quite happy with how my comic turned out and I have really enjoyed learning about comics. Before this project I had very little knowledge of comics and hadn’t read one since I was a lot younger. Even though I didn’t complete my comic what I did produce was better than I had imagined.
Luckily, I had what felt like a bit of a head start as in my last project I created a graphic novel. This taught me what not to do, therefore, this time around I had a better idea of what I was doing. As it was very new to me the end result of my graphic novel was that the story was quite unclear so my main aim this time was to make sure I didn’t repeat my mistakes and I feel as though I accomplished that.
I started out by going to the museum to get some inspiration. I found one of the images particularly striking; an abstract oil painting by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. The main thing I took from the painting was the different patterns that made up larger shapes, I wanted to take this idea and create different textures to add detail to my designs. I also went to the library and ended up loving the 1930s style comics with the grainy texture and retro block fills that didn’t quite line up with the outline. Even though probably done accidentally I liked the offbeat handmade effect it gave.
I struggled most with coming up with an idea for a story. I wanted to do something very different to my last project. My previous story was quite serious and after seeing James’ comics I was inspired to do something more entertaining and creative. Because of this I feel as though I enjoyed it more.
I tried to relate it something I know. My inspiration came from something I have strong feelings about, but I tried to portray it in a way that was funny and creative. The idea behind my comic is based around my own experience working in a restaurant and seeing firsthand the lack of interaction with people because they’re always on their phones. I tried to make my comic quite humorous whilst shining a light on the problem. I used the spider phone that attaches itself to your face as a sort of metaphor for being glued to your phone/ it having hold of you and not being able to escape it and portraying it as a sort of disease that is spreading. I also used patterns and crazy eyes to portray people going crazy when they don’t have their phones.
During this project I experimented quite a lot with styles and mixed media. I wanted to mix hand drawn and digital work together but combining the two didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I originally tried drawing by hand but found this a lot more time consuming and as I’m a perfectionist I found illustrator a lot easier to rectify my mistakes and edit things layer by layer. I also found I could create the same effects using photoshop and in my opinion, this looked a lot neater. I did end up changing my character style halfway through as I started to dislike the way it looked. Although, I’m glad I did it as I am now much happier with the outcomes. But this did set me back a bit.
As I study fashion, I am new to the storytelling and still working on my drawing using photoshop. But this 5-week project has given me a lot more confidence in my drawing skills and I have seen a vast improvement in my own work since my last project. I now feel a lot more confident and ready to use this in my subject more when designing clothes. I also think it would be good to bring the story telling aspect into my fashion to give my work a deeper meaning.
If I was to do this project again I would make my comic a bit shorter and squeeze more into the frames.
In this piece I printed out the phone separately. I used tape underneath to make this part stand out to emphasise the importance and what I want the viewer to focus on. I chose to reveal that the female character is playing tetris on her phone to show what she’s doing instead of having any interaction with her partner. You can see by their body language that it’s causing them to break apart and he’s not happy about it but she’s oblivious. I plan on making my male character anti-iPhone/ technology and he expresses it through his silent and angry facial expressions.
MEGAN PRESTON 