Workshop 1 - 09/05/2011

I went to Wyke Regis Junior School today for the first time today. I was really nervous to start with as this was what the whole project has been about and I was worried that the children would not like my ideas or they would be uncooperative. Luckily my school is really enthusiastic about the project and the whole of year 5 had been given a presentation that morning telling them about Moving Tides and my design, The Kraken. 

When I arrived at the school I got a quick tour and started setting up everything I was going to need. I first set up the dye vats and me and the teacher I am working with this week, Hannah started cutting up loads of string ready for the children.

I made sure I took along gloves, mask and health and safety forms so we could do the dying as safely as possible. The children were not aloud to put anything in the dye but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

We started the lesson off going through my sketchbook and I showed them tentacle samples, which we were going to be doing that day. The children were so enthusiastic, giving me ideas of how I could make the costumes, most of which were obviously impossible but it was great to see they were excited about the project and were thinking about it in a creative way. 

We started the practical session by tying string on all the tentacles ready to tie dye.I told the children to put 3 to 5 ties on each tentacle or collar. Some of the children found this quite difficult as it needed to be tied really tight! But we told them to bring it to either me or Hannah to check it was tight enough to go into the dye.

With the dye I was using the materials needed to soaked in soda ash first so I put this with water in 2 buckets at the front of the class which the children could put there tentacles in when they had finished. The children seemed to really enjoy doing this as I put a plastic ruler in them so they could poke the tentacles down. 

After this we took small groups of the children out to the dye vats so they could see how we would do it, even though they were not aloud to touch the dyes. 

I think my first workshop went really well considering how nervous I was. Unfortunately we did not manage to get the full 160 tentacles tied but they will be taken and finished at art club. I think I might have been a bit ambitious thinking that we would be able to get all the tentacles and the 20 collars tie dyed in one day as some of the kids were not as quick or as bothered as the others about doing it. For example one child managed to do 14, were as another child only did 2. I will take this into consideration for the next lesson and try and plan my time accordingly but it seems to me know matter how much you plan, things are always going to run abit late or there will be something that will go wrong. However I know this now and will not let it stress me out in future sessions. 

Into the Workshop...

After my tutorial with Adele I started thinking about my costume in terms if how I am going to construct it technically and how I will decorate it.

The first thing I did was to go into the workshop and speak to Julia, a technician in there, to see what she thought would be the simplest way to construct the costume taking into account it was going to be made en masse at some point. She told me I would be best to construct half the head out of clay, vac-form it and fill it with plaster. I would then be able to use the plaster cast over and over again. I would also have to make the opposite side of the head and form both sides in plasterzote and glue them together to create the head shape.

I had a number of problems when making the proto type for my costume. I had to rebuild in clay a number of times to get the correct shape and even when this was correct things still kept going wrong. When I had finally got the right shape and moulded it in plaster I had to re-do this as someone moved it in the workshop because someone moved it before it had set and it cracked. After this I also had to build up on top of the plaster with clay as it still was not the right shape. 

From this I vac-formed the shape in plasterzote to see if it was the correct shape to fit on a childs head. I also vac-formed the shape of the eye I wanted to use and attached the two together using cable ties like I will on the real costumes.

 This is the shape that came out of the vac-form machine which is the shape of the plaster mould it has been formed around.
This is the shape of the half head after it has been cut out and the eye attached.

Then I had to construct the opposite side of the head and try and match up the two sides. I found this very difficult as it is such a strange shape it was hard to see what I needed to change. 

I am very pleased with the overall shape of the half head and even though it has been very time consuming and frustrating at times I am very pleased with the outcome. It has also been very educational to be in the workshop, working with new materials and machine to create a costume in a different material other than fabric.

05/05/2011

Today I had a tutorial with Adele to discuss my progress and anything I was worried about. I originally organised this tutorial when I was stressing because my plaster moulds had been thrown away in the workshop and I wanted her advice. However by this time I had already had started to reconstruct my half heads but I was still massively stressing about how much I had to do and was very nervous about my first workshop at Wyke Regis . 
I did talk to her about my first workshop and she settled my nerves by just talking me through my plans for the workshop and she basically just gave me a pep talk about my project. This settled my nerves a little as I now new what to expect and that I was doing ok on this project in general.
Even though this tutorial was not about my actual physical work it was great to talk to Adele and it gave me a boost as I had lost a lot of passion for this project. 

Over Easter.....

The work I set myself for over Easter was to have all my tentacles ready to tie dye at my first workshop. This meant I needed to draw on all the tentacles onto doubled up calico, cut them out, sew them together and turn them through. This whole process was very VERY time consuming.
I found when drawing on the tentacles it was better to draw on all the tentacles free hand rather than have a paper pattern for them. By doing it this way I could fit more tentacles on the fabric as I could work them around each other and they would be all different shapes and sizes which is what I wanted. Cutting the tentacles out and sewing them together was actually the least time consuming part of the whole process. Turning them through was the worst as it just took so long because obviously they were all curvy and I wanted to pull all the curves through before tie dying them so no parts were missed out.
Even though this whole process was really long and really tedious when it was finished I was so SO happy! I know it took me a lot longer than I anticipated but when I counted 160 tentacles words can not describe...

Meeting with Teachers from Wyke Regis

I went to Weymouth to have a group meeting with the carnival co-ordinators and to meet with the teacher from the school I will be working with. We watched a video from a previous carnival and received general information about what would happen on the day of the carnival including what route the procession would take and when and were to meet on the day.
The main reason for us to be at the meeting was that it would finally be a chance for us to meet the teachers we will be working with and to get there opinion on our lesson plans and designs.

I was quite nervous about meeting with my teacher but it went very well. We discussed what we would do in each workshop and what materials the school would supply and what I would have to provide. I had to change my first two workshops slightly as the school wanted to get involved in the tie dying as the class I will be working with are 'tie dye experts'. So in the first lesson the children will tie dye all the tentacles and collars and in the second lesson they will stuff them and start attaching the fabrics to the collars. Luckily the school will be able to provide paints ect so I do not need to worry about trying to purchase these items within my budget. This meeting has given me more confidence about going into the schools and working with the children. The only thing I am worried about now is preparing everything in time and being able to buy everything I need within my budget. We also decided to do the lessons the one day a week as this gives me a chance to prepare for the next lesson and it also gives the school time to catch up on anything we did not get done in the workshop. We also discussed the fact that there is 3 year 5 classes in the school and if I would mind splitting the workshops between the 3. I think this is a better way of doing it because, as we discussed, the children will not get a chance to get to precious about there work. 

Design Development - Post Meeting

Design Development

After my tutorial with Adele started drawing up a new design, taking into account how the costume will be proportioned against a child's body.....

I also started to consider how to decorate the costume.....

These are the two drawings I will take into the meeting with Sarah Colwell, Jo Gardener, Adele Keeley and the rest of the students working on Moving Tides. I decided to take these two designs as I thought they would be able to visualize the proportions of the costume, as well as see in detail what type of items I was thinking of using to decorate the costume.

I am pleased with the way my designs are developing and I am excited about constructing them. I will need to sell this design to the carnival co-ordinators and take on board any suggestions/changes they want me to make.