Thursday, 26 February 2015

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. 

Wednesday, 25 February 2015

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. 

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

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.


Wednesday, 18 February 2015

Detailing Photo shoot




When I create my photo shoots I like them to be quite simple so that the main focus is on the clothing that I have created. I decided to increase the vibrancy so that the orange of the jacket really stood out against the plain white background. The reason why I wanted the brightness turned up so much is to give the viewer the sense that the model is standing on the top of a mountain ready to ski so that all the light is shining on them. 

Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome of my project and think that the process of getting to this point was well thought out and developed. My main regret is not leaving enough time to create a full outfit, meaning the leggings that I designed and also incorporating the heated tubes through the garments that I researched about. 

Even if I was given the opportunity to redo this project again I don't think I would dramatically change anything. The colour pallet that I have chosen, even though it is out of my comfort zone, worked really well and has helped prepare me for my final major project if I decide to use bright colours. 





Tuesday, 17 February 2015

the final product

I chose to create this particular design because I felt it was the most aesthetically pleasing and it showed off a lot of different detailing. I wanted to use a hi-tech fabric that is waterproof but after looking around at different websites I realised that they were well out of my price range, so I decided to use shower curtain material, as it possessed many of the same qualities. 

The part that proved to be the trickiest was making the hood. I couldn't quite get the sizing right and when I did it seemed flimsy and too light weight. Because of this I decided to give it a thicker lining making it appear fuller and heavier, giving off the look that I desired. If I had had more time to create this jacket I would have added an extra pocket on both of the upper arms and I would have lined the inside of the jacket just so that it was slightly more neater. 


My favourite part about the jacket definitely has to be the shoulders, I think they really work well with the contrasting colour of grey and they give the jacket more dimension, making it visually interesting.