Character project and overall evaluation

Personally I feel that this project was one of my weakest, maybe because I tried to do something different, working digitally and focusing on the promotion side of fashion, but it definitely wasn't one of my stronger projects. I tried to make it personal to me by basing it on my own mum but somehow, looking back, I feel as if that element was lost. I think I also become distracted towards the end of this project when we had to start thinking about final major project and I started to loose my sense of priorities, amongst travelling to berlin on a research trip and writing my proposal, my attention to the project at hand started to slack. 

I'm glad that I explored different ways of working over all of the short projects because now I know what style suits me best, I am most confident when working straight into a sketchbook rather than digitally. I have explored working in different sizes and page orientations and have come to the conclusion that I work best in A3 landscape as I am able to produce more designs per page and the overall layout tends to enhance my work. 

Photo Shoot

After I had designed what I wanted my characters superhero outfit to look like I moved onto to the photo shoot. I wanted my image to look like a page out of a comic book because it fits in with the rest of my project and seems like the most logical thing to do. I intend on producing three different images that show off the different set of skills that I had imagined for the Goodwife. I decided to use my mum as my main character, which I thought, worked quite well, as she has already been a housewife/stay at home mum, and remained a strong independent woman. Because of this, when I was directing her on the shoot she had her own ideas that helped and put the comedy element into it, which I wanted. 

Overall I liked the way that the photo shoot turned out, but as time started to run out towards the end of the project, I didn't have time to edit it as much as I wanted to, making it less like a cartoon which was the style I was going for.  I think the image that I was happiest with was definitely the replication image where I photo shopped 6 different images of my character doing daily chores and merged them all together. 

When it came to the styling of the shoot I wanted to go for colours that were conventional to a superhero, such as the red white and blue, commonly linked to Superman, Spiderman, Captain America and many more. My reason for doing this was so that the audience can easily establish what the image is trying to say. If I had more time I would have created my own black and white comic strip to use in the background, but instead I used one that already existed and stars an independent strong female heroine. If I was to do the shoot again there would be a lot I would change, but overall I am reasonably happy with how it turned out. 

Designing

When it comes to my superhero outfit, I want to design something similar to that of a modern heroin. Romper jumpsuits that aren't revealing and make the heroine look like a sexual icon. I want the outfits to be practical as well as visually pleasing. Introducing utility belts or special pockets, things that enhance the outfit and make it better, could do this. Batman and cat woman have outfits like this, such as the bat belt. 

The fabric that I want to use will be tight spandex/elastic, suitable for flexible movements and agility. 

Even though I want to design the outfits for this project, I want to focus on the styling aspects so my designs are purely to enhance the project so that people can get a clear idea of what look I am going for. 

The Goodwife

My superhero character is going to be based on a motherly figure, looking at stereotypes of the modern housewife and also the 1950's housewife. What’s the difference between the two? And do we have different attitudes and opinions of the two? My mum has been a single working mum and a stay at home mum and I think it is fair to say that she was equally as busy when doing both and I respected her equally as much doing both. 

The super powers that I have decided to give my character are super speed, mind reading and the power to replicate themselves. The reason why I chose these specific skills are because they are what every child assumes their mother is able to do. We are all baffled as a child at how our mothers are able to do the unexplainable like always know when we are lying or the ability to do so many things whilst multi-tasking. So I am going to take this childish view of our parents and create a character as if its from their perspective. 

Powerful women

From doing a lot of research into different female superheroes it has shown me that the newer, more modern super heroines have become more powerful rather than just being sexual icons. In the earlier days most of the super heroines seemed to be different versions of the heroes which in my eyes is quite degrading, not only were heroes like wonder woman and cat woman female versions of superman and batman, but they were also portrayed in an extremely provocative way, with their skimpy outfits, knee high boots and in catwomans case fishnet tights. The worst offender of this is Halle Berry's interpretation of cat woman where her outfit is as revealing as possible and almost entirely made out of PVC.

It is only as we have entered this new age of superheroes that the female characters have finally caught up. The outfits tend to cover up a lot more skin and rather than playing damsels in distress or being the pathetic assistant to there "real" hero the women manage to hold their own being just as strong as the men. This is most commonly seen when looking at the new cat woman played by Anne Hathaway, and especially the black widow from the Avengers. 

When creating my superhero look I definitely want to channel the idea that this is a strong powerful woman who is dangerous to mess with, rather than a weak sexualised version of this put out there to please a male demographic. 

Character project

I decided to choose this project over the Pick 'n' mix brief because I wanted to develop the detailing project as much as possible, so I spent an extra week expanding it as much as I could. I also thought that this brief would be quite fun and light, which is something that I haven't really had the opportunity to do yet.

Following the "fun" theme, my choice of character is a super hero named the Goodwife. It is based on my own mum and I want to make it quite a humorous project playing on stereotypes of women. I want to take this project in a slightly different route, looking more at the fashion promotion side, including styling and photography but still incorporating my own designs into it as well. The reason why I have decided to do this is because I don't feel as if up to this point I have explored this in very much detail and feel that it is definitely one of my weaker points that need to be worked on in preparation for my final major project.

Not only am I working differently by looking at the promotion sector of fashion, but I have also decided to work digitally for this project, doing all of my concept boards on Photoshop and then putting them into a sketchbook to go alongside my designs. I am slightly skeptical about doing this because I have only ever worked in sketchbooks and am so use to doing so.