BLOG TASK 3: Reflections on how the Better Lives themes have influenced your project outcome and your personal development.
When I choose my Better Lives project I decided to go for something completely different from my degree subject which is mostly based on the communication’s strategies. Both make-Up and Prosthetic connected to the theme “Developing a Character” attracted my attention and curiosity as I was sure it would be based on practical classes and also because one of my life desire was to learn some make-up practices. What I could not immediately understand was the connection between the better lives themes and the course itself and how one day I could have assemble it to my current studies.
During the first couple of weeks we all were introduced to the Prosthetic by our project’s leader, Steven Salomon and we were also explained what we would have practically realized during the following sessions in order to develop a character for the final project.The real challenge started when we were asked to realise some painted illusion and distortion effects, working with one of our group’s peers. The process was over all really engaging, even if not so easy at my opinion, and what I also found really interesting was the variety of all our approaches to the task and the diversity expressed by our final results. My first make up performance, as you can see from the first picture, did not turn out to be perfect as I did not really achieve the requested effect but at the same time it made me understand where exactly I could improve myself.
Thankfully during the second workshop, where we focused on such types of effects like bruise and burns, I was able to realise a more realistic prosthetic and I was delighted I had reached a quite good result. That was also the time when I understood that despite the high level of consumption made by all of us students in order to achieve the desired goal, it was very important that we all would follow the right procedure when throwing away some products , in order to be positively responsible for our environment . Furthermore, it let me think and hope about a better effort and a different commitment coming from the fashion industry towards such important matters like social responsibility and sustainability.
Unfortunately, the last part of our project has been affected by this international emergency and to be honest I was quite frustrated not to be able to complete our scheduled workshops as I really wanted to gather more practice. Eventually, during the last session, we all were given the chance to talk about our developed characters through some concept design because obviously we were not in possess of the main materials. The most surprising thing was that we all came out with beautiful and different ideas, all nicely realised with the simple use of our creativity, which we sometimes underestimate because backed up by a digital kind of support.
Overall, this project has been very useful for a deep understanding of the better lives themes and how they can be applied in many different life’s context and it has also lighted my desire to keep on learning some more about the make-up practices. Furthermore I have finally been able to associate them to my current studies and I am pretty sure one day they will support my creativity when I am asked to develop a narrative for a brand or a social campaign.