Preparing for the next workshop.......... (2)

After my second workshop at Wyke Regis Juniors I took on the task of taking all of the collars home to attach the fabric to. This is going to be very time consuming as I need to pin the fabric in a position were I can sew them to the collar in a straight line.The students had not done this when pinning on the fabric so I will have to unpin everything and re pin it into a suitable position. I will also need to add fabrics as some of the underneath fabrics were not thick enough.

Image of collars after I had re pinned and added extra fabric.

For the next workshop I need to vac-form and cut out all my masks for the children to decorate. This will also take a long time as there is 40 half heads and I am going to cut different patterns down the ridge.

Workshop 2 - 18/05/2011

Today was my second workshop at Wyke Regis and I was quite excited for todays lesson as it was the popcorn day and I knew the children would be excited. I worked with a different class today as the school wants all the year 5 students to be involved in making the costumes. 

I decided along with the teacher I was working with, that as we had so much to do today we should split the classroom up into separate work stations.

We had a table for cutting up the fabric for the collars:

A table for pinning the the fabric onto the collars:

These are the fabrics I cut up in preparation for today.

Some students pinning on and cutting the fabric to size for the collars.

Some of the students holding up there collars showing what they have done so far.

We had a station for stuffing the tentacles with newspaper:

We also had a section for making and stuffing the tentacles with popcorn:

Table for popcorn makers and finished tentacles

A student stuffing the tentacles with popcorn

I think the children enjoyed this session as there was some exciting activities and we made sure everyone got a turn at each table by getting the students to change tables every 10 minutes. However because I was working with a new class we had to introduce them to the project and this took a lot more time than expected. Unfortunately there was a lot of work that still needed doing so  I took all the collars home to attach fabric too and the school said they would fill the rest of the tentacles in art club. Even though I did not get done what I wanted in this session I really enjoyed it as the children were really enthusiastic and seemed to enjoy the tasks set. 

Experimentation Reflections...

Even though the other post I did about experimentation was the main bulk of what I had been doing in the workshop, I have also been experimenting on different things throughout this project. I have not included everything under the label 'Experimentation' as what experimenting I have been doing is a bit all over the place and is mostly in my sketchbook. 
Experimentation has taken place throughout this project for me as I begun experimenting with different design ideas, shapes and colours and that has continued into making things in 3D. By having tutorials, peer feedback and just by working through problems that have arisen myself, I have discovered that experimenting is very important and can bring up issues or even positive things that I would not have expected. 
The experimentation in the workshop has been very up and down for me as it took me ages (and I mean AGES) to first get the correct shape of my Kraken head. I had to keep adding and taking away areas of my clay mould and from that I would vac-form and make in plaster. Then it still would not be right so I would build it again. All this was very tedious and I have to admit towards the end I just wanted to smash it up. BUT finally I got it right, and both sides matched and I was so happy...
Then the worst happened... As I had left it to try over the easter break one of the technicians in the workshop threw both final casts away so this meant I had to start the whole process again. I could do it alot faster this time as I knew the materials and how the equipment worked but it was the trying to match the two half heads in shape and size. This was as difficult as I had found it the first time round and because I had to much other stuff to be working on and preparing for my workshops ect, that the two halves are unfortunately different. This is very annoying but there is nothing else I could do taking time and everything else into consideration.
However generally I feel I have had a very positive experience in the workshop and in all of my experimenting. I know longer feel nervous or apprehensive about going into the workshops and now I just feel (which is not really positive but) that something is always bound to go wrong, know matter how hard I try so I might as well not moan about it and just get on with it.    

Prepping for the next workshop....

As there was not time to finish all the tentacles I had to bring a load home with me, which had already been dyed but the strings needed cutting off. This was VERY time consuming as we told the children to tie them really really really really tight... and they listened! But after about 6+ hours of cutting the string I managed to get them all hung up ready to dry and this was very satisfying!

2 or 3 tentacles per peg!

I still need to source the popcorn for the next session but I told Hannah and Maria (another teacher working on MovingTides) that I was having problems with it and they suggested only stuffing a few of the tentacles with the popcorn and the rest with newspaper. This will work out better for me in a number of ways as it means I will be able to source it easier, I will not have to pre-make a load and get it to Weymouth as well as everything else and it will be better for the budget. I am a bit disappointed about this but I think it makes sense I just hope the carnival organisers wont be annoyed.

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.