Blog 4 – Peer Review
For the peer review, I have chosen to discuss Yi An Chen’s third blog in which she reflects on the ’Navigating Through Clothing’ course that I also attended. The reasons why I have chosen to review her blog are because I have always been curious about what others think about the course. There were students who are not from the performance department during the project and she is one from the PR course. I have met her in the class, and she was very enthusiastic to learn new costume design skills.
At the beginning of her blog, she mentions that the different learning processes of costume design and her own subject are very different. So, I can imagine that this attributed to the course being a big challenge for her. Although it was difficult, she engaged well with the course and her costume was exceptionally clear and covered the main themes well.
The movement of performers is always something that designers have to consider when they pick different materials and fabric. This is something she also mentions in her blog. With this, I think it’s easy to envision someone wearing your product in your mind and think about materials that you might use for different body parts. For example, it’s probably not a great idea to have rigid materials around limbs or other moving body parts if the performer is supposed to do a difficult dance.
This isn’t something that I really thought about before, and I never really considered the movement of performers in my own work, so I’d like to incorporate this realization into my next work.
In the primary research, she mentioned that she struggled to find inspiration from the museum visit and to bring the inspiration that she did find back into her final character design. This is something that I totally understand, and it’s still not an easy process for me, even though I’m a 3D student. But she does reflect that after the online session, she understood how to apply primary research into the design on a higher level.
Her final character design was The Little White Duck from the given text, Hansel and Gretel. I love her idea of the attempt at the character design because I personally felt that the little white duck doesn’t have much presence in the story compared to the other human characters. This means that she read the text very diligently and with a lot of thought.
At the end of her reflection, she writes that she doesn’t think that her final character design was a success. I disagree, I saw her collage work at online session and it definitely left me with a good impression, because I can still recall the image vividly. Her collage was sophisticated and used raw flowers which was subtle and intense at the same time. I was really fascinated by her work, and I would want to tell her that she should be proud of what she made.
To conclude, I think while reading someone else’s reflection, I was also able to reflect differently on my own works and the next steps that I can take in future projects. It was great to meet people from other courses and share ideas. I think Yi An Chen’s reflection was both honest and thoughtful and showed me my work in a different light.