Blog 3 – Project reflection and Outcomes

I decided on “Navigating Through Clothing” with Jessica Curtis for my Better Lives project. This unit aimed to broaden your knowledge on a selected subject, which was alongside mixed students who are studying at SMC in their first year. I was pretty nervous about studying with students who I did not know beforehand, so I was very relieved when I saw Jess when I opened the classroom door the first time. 
 
In the first week of class, we were given a handout of Hansel and Gretel and our objective was to design one character from the story. When we went through the narrative together, Jess told us the key points of reading performance texts. She told us to be aware of the character’s physical features, time periods, places, smells, and the weather. She also told us to ask questions like “ What does the character say about themselves” and “What do others say about the character?”. Being able to answer those questions would help our understanding on the portrayal of the final character design.
 
While I was reading the text, I felt Hansel and Gretel were both suffering from hunger, because of a famine. Even though they were physically weak, their hearts and spirits reminded me of a “fighter figure”.  

During the second week of class, we made a visit to the British Museum and the National Theatre. There I was able to get some inspiration for the character design. At the National Theatre, they always have a small costume exhibition which has the costumes for different plays that were performed there. There was a costume that intrigued me, it was a massive body padding, made by a duvet and covered by the cloud suit. This costume was used in “Mr. Gum and the Dancing Bear (2019)”. When I made the body padding suit, we were required to buy poly wadding sheets, which consists of thick cotton to build the padding. The idea of using a duvet really inspired me to use more sustainable or second hand materials if the outcome or the effect is the same.

In the British Museum, at the British Iron Age section, I was fascinated by a bronze helmet and shield from 350-50 BC that was found at the river Thames. These object made me recall the Hansel Fighter’s figure. So I used it in my final character design.
  

 
For Hansel, I decided on a hungry, under-fed fighter. I also wanted to create the opposite of that for when the witch feeds Hansel. To do that I incorporated body padding, to make Hansel look a lot fatter because of all the food that the witch fed him.
 
The first step, while approaching the character design was to draw the main character and the other character’s relationship, to understand their objective mutual relations. I also researched the story’s background (Why did the author write this story, what was the time period, what is the age of the characters etc). 
 
From that, I thought that the helmet and shield that I saw earlier were associated with Vikings (there was no detailed description at the object itself). So I went to the JORVIK Viking Center in York on the 7^th of March to figure out how Vikings lived and what kind of materials they used for the clothes they wore.  Surprisingly, I found out that they figured out skills for dying garments with bugs, vegetables, and other natural products.

I also visited kilt shops and fabric stores in Edinburgh on the 14^th of March to research more about different Clan’s tartan for the character design. It was a great opportunity to see various tartans and the history of it.  

I also visited kilt shops and fabric stores in Edinburgh on the 14^th of March to research more about different Clan’s tartan for the character design. It was a great opportunity to see various tartans and the history of it.  

From my primary and secondary research, I created collages for the task. The moment Hansel was hearing his parents dialogs while sitting in front of the door. I quite enjoyed making the collages, although my final character design wasn’t as good I envisioned it in my collages. I went back to my hometown in the middle of spring break because of this pandemic. After I departed I realised that I left my drawing material in London, so I had to use my iPad which I’ve never really used for this kind of work. That was a massive challenge for me, and I should have trained myself in doing more design work on it.

While I was attending the online lectures I realised that I forgot to decide on the performance type. As a performance course student, this is an unacceptable mistake because we always create designs that associate with different performances. 

To conclude, even though this project mostly overlapped with what I’ve learned at block 1, it also let me reconfirm the processes of making characters again and it will be helpful in my future work. I can learn from the mistakes that I made, and apply that knowledge and experience in the rest of my career.