Circus of Sound

This project was similar to the last one in that it was all about typography, but the brief was really quite confusing. the idea though was:

create cd covers for 11 of the 12 songs listed

-libertango
-hughe ashton's playground
-autumn in warsaw
-incarnation II
-endgame
-strumming
-play piano study no. 11
-even tenor
-forlorn hope fancy
-sonata no. 5
-the alcotts
-ship in the embrace of the endless dark ocean

I decided not to use the alcotts, cause I didn't get any feelings when I listened to it.

Turned out that the list of songs we were given were most of an album (Play) by a woman called Joanna Macgregor, so I bought the album and me and my house mate, Jack, sat and listened to it and imagined it was a film soundtrack and tried to visualise scenes that fitted with the music. I wrote these down and then turned them into watercolour paintings.

-A small ship in a storm
-palm trees on a beach with bits of rubble on it
-an explorer climbing over bones in a cave fleeing from a giant spider
-someone floating at the bottom of a waterfall in a jungle
-a cannibal baby
-a monkey publishers
-a woman tied up in the boot of a car
-men standing around a man they've killed
-a man at the bar drinking his sorrows away
-a meth-lab run by a red-neck fox
-and finally a muslim exorcism

I chose to use the font family: Didot throughout, as it has a classic and elegent feel. I realised a little later that the brief had been written in the same font.

Here's what my collection of CD covers looked like at the end:



I unfortunately missed the crit for this project on account of being ill. I was going to say: "if I'm honest this brief left me cold" but I think that it's blatantly obvious that I disliked this project. Out of all the projects I've done in second year Graphics this would be the one where I'd scrap it and start completely fresh, and I don't mean my work I mean change the brief to something stimulating.

Here is how the brief should have been:
Get a random assortment of songs, REALLY random, so loads tracks from all the genres for the past 50 years say. Cut them out of their printer paper so they are all individual, then have each member of the class take 8 randomly out of a hat. Then say to them, through use of good typography and shit I want you create a set of 8 singles, one for each of the tracks you have and brand them so they part of a set. So I've got a Beatles track and a Slipknot track and an R. Kelly track etc and I need to bring them together into a cohesive form? Now that sounds interesting. Instead all we got were most of the track list off the back of one of Tim's albums, an album that already exists, that I bought and which as far as classical music goes isn't very good at all. Since finishing this project I've not listening to Joanna McGregor's Play album, and bare in mind that I stayed up all last night with Classical FM on, so I'm not just hating the genre, it really is a bad CD.

I realise I've been rather scathing, but I have offered an alternative to the brief which I hope for the sake of next years 2nd years is used instead.

"Quotes" Poster

This was a purely typographical project were each student got given a separate quote. Some people had things Einstein had said, and other people had things philosophers and presidents and the like had said. I got a quote from the Old Testament of the Bible. I didn't realise this at first though, I thought it was some sort of wishy-washy poem from the end of the 1800s or something. Here's the quote:

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is better than wine"

-Song of Songs

When I thought it was a poem from late 1800s my initial thought was some over the top frilly fancy calligraphy type font, but then we were told not to do the obvious, and that struck a chord in my head.

With this quote we had to design an A1 poster that had our quote, the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks on it in the font we'd chosen. We also had to Design a T-shirt, a Billboard poster mockup and then write an essay about why I'd chosen what I had based on the quote and stuff.

I haven't ever looked at typography as just something by itself, so this was a bit of a new thing for me. Jonathan said "Learn the rules, then break them" so I decided being as I'm learning the rules I best do my best not to break them just yet. Other people in class did the opposite and broke the rules and ended up with illegible work that just used big fonts (like famous ones cause their good) and things like that.

Anyway, after taking a hefty bible out of the library I decided the font I needed had to:
-look old, quote is from the old testament of the bible, or at least look old
-Needs to be super embelished
-needs to be romantic and poetic

I bought a magazine that came with a little booklet (it was like a typography special coincidently, which was pretty useful) with the 150 odd best fonts ever in all the different catagorys. So I looked through this for something I felt was sympathetic to my quote, because there's so many fonts out there, let's just go through a shortlist of the best ones to save some time.

I did find a font that fitted those 3 things, Burgues Script. But the problem with it is it was the obvious choice, and it seemed so light and airy, whereas Kari Display Pro had some weight (it's a quote from the bible afterall, a weighty thing itself), but was also described as "seductive, lovely, shapely, Kari's charm has a hint of danger to it" and that just seemed to feel like my quote. Because people have tried to have the chapter in the bible it's from removed. Also, it is an attractive font that isn't ultra common. Once I had the font, I created the A1 poster:



After this I took elements from the quote for the other 2 formats.

For the billboard I used Kari Display Pro Wide and took an excerpt from the quote "love is better than wine" which is a phrase I'd said fairly often to my mom in the past, and I felt like it would be a good thing to have on billboards for people to read and just think about their drink problems.



For the t-shirt I thought it'd be head turning/thought provoking if I wore a t-shirt that said "let him kiss me" on it, I'm straight, so I don't really want men to kiss me, but I thought it would be a bit of a joke. With the t-shirt I got some iron on transfer sheets that you could print onto and then place on to the fabric and just iron. We didn't have an iron so I used one of the girls' straiteners, which worked fine.



Then lastly for the essay I took the shape of the stanzas in the song of solomon and put my text in the same pattern.



I was the only person who had all 4 elements done, whilst I was praised for my choice of font I was accused of not laying the A1 poster out in a way that was sensitive to the quote. Least you could read all of it though.

Internet Youth TV Station

For this project we had to come up with 10 ideas for an internet tv station. Either 10 channels or 10 programs within a channel, and these ideas needed to be aimed at a youth audience, for me a youth audience was about 12ish to my age.

My big idea was based around the blackberry messenger being encrypted so it can't be intercepted, and using this form of communication to send video, that way I could show tv programs that wouldn't be otherwise available. Within Britain this isn't required, but in less liberal countries like China they censor a lot of stuff that I know I would have wanted to watch from about age 12 onwards. Also, we were told to consider our demographic, and the Chinese youth is the largest youth demographic.

So I decided to invent a television network that would be broadcast over BBM in China, with 10 channels, each one specifically showing one sort of thing that would not be allowed to be broadcast in China.

The channels were:
-Forbidden Music (playing music that's been banned/illegal in china)
-Ugly Obscene (playing shows like Jackass)
-Crime Learn (playing documentrys about crime)
-Fulon Gong (guided meditation, exercise workouts and spiritual guidance on the banned faith)
-Discovery News (News that would not be told to the chinese public)
-Tibet News (news that relates to Tibet that is forbidden)
-Taiwan News (news that relates to Taiwan that is forbidden)
-Porn (fairly self explanatory)
-Gay Porn
-Lesbian Porn (these two extra porn channels are there so that nobody sees something they don't want to see. Further specialisation within the Original Porn channel could also be done in the future)

Here's the final artworked version of my idea:








I used the chinese flag as a basis for the logo, and then changed the stars for eyes, as for me these are linked with big brother (I quite liked the name BBTV, because it could also be read as big brother tv, and I have a bit of a thing for big brother) and then I found out what the chinese characters for the different tv channels I had were and put those in the bottom right corner or each ident.

I used the blackberry website for inspiration for how to present my channels. I used a white background instead of black though because Black is associated with death by chinese people, so I used a white background instead but then for the text about each channel I put it in a black box, because it's sort of the death of censorship and control, and it also allowed me to use the same style of typography and font colours as the blackberry website without going overly death-y for chinese people.

I really liked my idea, I was one of very few people who had 10 ideas as well, but I didn't get that good a mark and I'm now referred to as the corrupter of the Chinese people. This isn't true, watching porn doesn't mean your corrupted, and I'd imagine if it's the biggest youth market in the world there's a lot of money to be made out of it.

Royal Knockout!

We just had some worksheets to fill in for what we thought Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton were thinking the day before their wedding, and then what we personally thought of the royal wedding.

I missed doing these in lesson, so I didn't fill them in until after I'd been to the royal wedding, so I'd already given it a fair bit of thought. I thought that William would be thinking about how he'll be king, about his mom, and about how he got to marry the woman he loves instead of someone he had to marry for political reasons, which most royals end up having to do, and I don't think that'd be much fun. I thought Kate would be thinking about all the pressure, how she'll be entering the history books and all the people that were watching.








I'd already drawn a picture to express my feelings about the royal wedding experiance. I camped out with my mate (the one who does my dinners) and her mate from back home. We got their at half 11, went to bed (by bed I mean we huddled under a sleeping back and put our head on the curb. I understand now why tramps constantly want to drink booze, I couldn't imagine trying to sleep outside on the streets unless I was drunk. Otherwise it'd just be far too uncomfortable) at half 2, woke up at half 4 when everyone else woke up. Got a coffee and then because we only had like sleeping bags and booze between us we packed up quickly and got a spot almost at the barrier. Someone shouted we were ruining it for everyone, but they could've got up at half 3 if they wanted time to pack up their tents. I saw the whole thing from the side the guests were going in. I managed to see the queen and Borris Johnson, and whilst it was a pretty massive nause having to be stuck still for 8 hours it was an experiance, and I just think whilst I'm in London why not take advantage of that fact. So, here's what I drew to express my "royal wedding experience":








This is my last Graphics project, I've really enjoyed the year. I found all the projects engaging and just wish I'd had as much enthusiasm at the start of the year as I do now.

Wish You Were Here

This project we had to redesign postcards so they were really different to normal postcards.

I decided to make 3D postcards, but stick to regular post card dimensions. As it was a sunny day I decided to go around central London and photograph some of the landmarks. I went round:
- Houses of Parliament
- Buckingham Palace
- Hyde Park
- Trafalgar Square
- Oxford Street
- Camden Locks

However when I got to Hyde park my camera ran out of battery and I had to go back home pretty disgruntled. I tried again the next day with a full battery and took some better shots anyway.

I took photographs at different distances to the landmarks so I could layer them and then one from the left angle and one from the right angle for the closest layer.

I kept the furthest picture intact and cut out the closer layers so you could see some of the background behind them. And then I just used a consertina so that they could be flattened or in 3D.

My favourite is the Camden one, as I managed to catch a couple of rockers sat on the bridge and one of them glared at me; I like how it shows what Camden's like without using the place but the people, who are a staple of it anyway.

Here's how it looks in my portfolio:

Iconoclastic Plastic

For this project we had to turn a regular house hold item into an icon.

I chose to turn a tea spoon into a religeous icon, because people always seem to offer cups of tea in times of crisis instead of looking to God these days, and I like that idea that the new religeon is having a hot drink and sighing about things being wrong.

I went with a stained glass window and heavy handed catholic colour scheme to show that it was a religeous icon, here's how it looks:

Feature Shop

For this project I had to come up with a feature film idea including the locations, characters, plot, costumes and some dialog.

I came up with a zombie film where people turned into zombies through a hypnotising virus that circulated around facebook, and the protagonist was really anti facebook and technology.

My pitch went well and it was chosen to be one of 3 films we made during the lesson, however we used a sony video camera to record it and then when we tried to get the footage off we had a whole raft of problems, which was annoying. We filmed the scene where Will (computer guy) is trying to crack the anti virus and Rod (the anti technology guy) holds the zombie back. Unfatunately we couldn't edit it together or show the rest of the class, but everyone worked pretty well together to make it.

Then everyone had to make a trailer for their own film. I didn't do this until I got back on campus, and it was pretty difficult to convince everyone to be a zombie because it was cold. But thankfully Jack and Neil were willing to run around and shout things outside for me. The trailer was only meant to be 30 seconds long, but 50 was the best I could get with it still making sense, some people were over 2 mins so I don't think I did too badly.

Here it is:

Brick

For this project we had to come up with 100 new uses for a single regular sort of house brick. This was one of my favourite projects and I tried really hard with the lay out, usually I just drop the pictures onto Xara and print it as they land (not really, but I just went extra detailed with the lay out for this project) but everything was exactly right for this one. And all the drawings were drawn on the computer so they look good.

I did it before with 4 collumns at the bottom, but redid it with 5 all the way along instead of having a gap in the middle. I could have let it slide, I liked it before, but this was the project I feel happiest about so I felt it warrented the small touch up.

here it is:








I usually try to avoid being proud or thinking too much of myself as I don't think it's healthy, but this one project I felt like I'd done better than the rest of the class.

Ereda's Public Drawing Documentary

Ereda's brief was get into pairs, go to a busy place and try to sell wacky portraits to people. Record this and make it into a short (some people clearly didn't grasp the meaning of short) documentry film on youtube.

I partnered up with Billy, ignoring his bad punctuality and thinking instead about his skill at drawing.

We planned to meet at covent garden station at 10 and that we'd've practiced before arriving so we knew what we were doing. I took wacky portraits to mean charicatures, so I practiced doing those over the weekend.

With the first 3 images you can really see how I improved at that style under Chloe's tutelage (Chloe's the girl I'm drawing).











Next time I practiced there were more of us around and of course everyone wanted to have a go at drawing someone, so I included a few of other peoples stuff.



(Kieran with a hat on drawn by me)


(Grace drawn by Chloe)


(Grace drawn by me)


(kieran with a hat on drawn by kieran without a hat)


(me drawn by Chloe)

I also seemed to take a massive step backwards, the last picture of Chloe I drew is the best characature I've ever drawn, including the ones I sold. There were a few more drawings, but they weren't so good.

Speaking to a few guys on monday who've tried over the weekend, I learn that asking for donations is the best way to go in regards to pricing. So, the next morning, I get up early, buy myself a couple of big black pens and a new A3 sketch pad (as the last one's full of everyone's practice charicatures) and arrive at covent garden for bang on 10. Billy arrived at 11 and we got cracking on drawing the folk of covent garden. That didn't work, I think because it was a tuesday morning and the place was pretty quiet really.

Next stop was trafalgar square, we had a bit of success here, I drew a french woman and Billy drew a mexican woman who were hanging out together on a bench. I quickly discovered that out of the 2 of us, I was the most capable when it came to going upto people and asking them if they'd like to be drawn. Which is a bit daunting, but as Billy was there I felt like I had someone to best in that regard, and I did. The ones Billy drew were all set up by me. He's just a bit shyer, once we got talking to people he'd open up a bit more.

But anyway, trafalgar square was a bit empty, so we went to the parkland around buckingham palace, had no success (couple of little frenchies tried to give it the bigun, but they soon got shut up. Unfautunatly they were about 14, so I couldn't really claim any macho points). Then it started raining (so it's not only tuesday, but a wet tuesday, which just sounds like the worst day to ty and sell something outside EVER) so we went for a bit of lunch in tesco.

2 sandwiches and a couple of cookies later we were back on the scene. We went to whatever the monument next to picadilly circus is called and I drew a dutch girl there.

Then we went back to trafalgar square, asked all around there, and a group of 3 bristolian birds were up for it. The one in the middle was pretty tidy, so I chatted to them whilst Billy drew them.

We tried a few other people, but no-one else was interested and we'd been doing it for a good 4-5 hours so we decided to call it a day. Billy was entrusted with creating the short documentry on youtube, and this is what he created:



I think our video was one of the best because it didn't drag on. Some of these videos were 9 minutes long. Trust me, watch 2 documentrys about doing street drawing that are 9 mins long each and they don't feel short, they feel like 20 minutes of your life you're never going to see again.

A good few lessons learnt, it's scary cold selling things to people, being able to sell yourself is the only way you can make money and most importantly of all, the biggest skill in creating a video is cutting shit out of it.

SHORT is like 5 mins or less, some of those documentrys were literally painful to watch (that old grainy filter over one of them made my eyes kill). Next time we have to make a film I hope there's a time limit in the brief (like no longer than 3 mins) or something (I say that forgetting the newest brief we've got, make a feature length film...)

Dream Project

After everyone (I say everyone, I'm not including myself in that everyone) moaned at the teachers because they haven't liked the projects so far (like say, I've had no issue with any of the projects) they set the next brief as "Invent your own dream project".

It was a really nice sunny day (I'd spent my lunch out on the grass with some friends) and I couldn't help but think about warm summery type things. I came up with a few summer holiday inspired ideas, but went with this one:

"Come to Sunny Prestatyn

Design a holiday brochure for the area you live in (if you live on campus design it for Beckton, not the university accommodation).

Create a 4 page A5 booklet including front and back cover and artwork it onto A2.

You can be as truthful as you like, so long as you sell the location as a good holiday destination."

The title's from a Phillip Larkin poem, not where my parents live (which is Wythall), if you've read the poem then the title will make a bit of sense, if you haven't then you'll just ask me if that's where I'm from. I'm not even from wythall (nevermind Prestatyn), we moved there from croydon.

I was told by someone that the brief I'd come up with was what the kids over at central st martins are doing at the moment, that isn't why I made it up though. I just thought that most of the people at UEL don't live in the nicest areas, they don't live in touristy places, so it would be interesting to see them try to sell it. And for me it would be an excuse to learn a bit more about beckton. Currently I just know what time various shops are open till and the best route by which to get to those shops, that and where the hospital is (about an hours walk north (and slightly west). When I got to the hospital I also discovered that the 474 bus will take me from cyprus station to the hospital in 10 minutes. Still though, I had a nice walk doing it, saw some horses and a horse and cart, which I might've missed had I gone by bus.

Anyway, my brief wasn't picked, Ereda's was.

Mile High Type Club

I missed the briefing for this one as I woke up late (missed my alarm) and so I missed a few key bits of information. Things such as: don't use a bed sheet it looks shit.

But by the time I'd been brought upto speed on that it was too late, I'd figured out what it was I wanted to do and alas, it involved a bed sheet (it actually involved 4, but that number went down to 2 when the market stall only had 2, and it went down to 1 when I started trying to do it) and I couldn't think of a new idea that I wanted to do.

The brief was to pick a font and get a letter form as big as you can and as accurately. I thought it HAD to be on a vertical surface, but judging by the fact that over half of them were done on the floor, I guess that can't be the case.

Which is annoying, because my friend said to me when I got the brief "Oh, I'm going home for the weekend (to her farm in Staffordshire) you could come with me and then use one of the spare fields and just go mental with it, and we've got stuff to lift you up to photograph it and everything"

"no, no" I said "that sounds fantastic and I'd really like to do that, but it has to be on a wall."

I wanted to keep pushing myself and trying new things after the success of my Justin Bieber video, so I went to the print making room and had a chat with Glen, and he said try this cyanotype thing, so I researched it, liked the look of it and decided to do that. I couldn't use the facilities until thursday, which meant I missed most of the lesson, but it sounded like it was just a lot of grumbling really.

Cyanotype works by coating something absorbant (paper, wood or fabric) with a mix of 2 chemicals (Ammonium iron(III) citrate and Potassium ferricyanide) that react with light and turn blue. If you block the light however then that area will remain white, and then you wash the chemical off and it will stay white and the part that was exposed will remain this really nice blue.

This is a very easy, cheap process... on normal sized bits of fabric, not on 3 metre square bed sheets. I did a test and it looked great. So I made my stencil, took the sheet to a dark room (which turned into a pitch black room about 2 mins in as the red light refused to work) and began coating it in this chemical. It took aaaages and loads of the chemical to coat the bloody thing. It has to dry in the dark, so I left it there over night.

I came back the next day, after looking around for a studio with enough space next to a big enough window I gave up on the AVA building and took the sheet back to my kitchen and laid it out beside the window. And then I went and did some other stuff (went to my friend's fashion show, hung about with my mate who got roped into wearing a rediculous dress made out of metros (where I saw more of her than I'm used to!) had some dinner, went to a party, left early because I was just so knackered) and when I went to bed I couldn't sleep for thinking of the sheet and how this was the best time to wash it as it would be dark in my kitchen. I checked on it and it was the right colour blue, so I put my dressing gown and some plastic gloves on and got washing.

And that's when it all went wrong. I mean, there were a few bits of fabric I'd missed with paint cause I did it in the dark (like propper dark) but the bloody thing hadn't exposed properly and so it came out a pathetic watery blue. Like a swimming pool blue rather than a nice american passport blue. Which made me lose heart somewhat, as I'd sacrificed on size so I could experiment with a new technique and it'd come out shit.

I hung it off of a bridge and photographed it and threw it in my wardrobe, embarressed by my failure. I'm back in birmingham next weekend, I'm going to see if with access to the country side, my parent's garage and a bunch of mates with nothing else to do than sit around in the park for the next 2 weeks we can create something worthy.

Here's the way it looks in my portfolio:











Still though, be a bit shit to just abandon my "try to push yourself and try new things" mentality because of one failed hurdle. Besides, even the projects I am happy with need tweaking/redoing, just because they can be made better, so mile high type (expect the next one to be on the floor and huge) wouldn't be any exception even if it had gone a bit better.

Justin Bieber No Fear

That was our brief. "Justin Bieber No Fear".

First thing that comes to mind is JB combined with the No fear logo, but that just seemed too easy. Especially after having had a pep talk earlier in the day saying we really ought to push ourselves, those that push the furthest will have the most interesting out comes. So I decided to make a film about killing him, as personally he's the sort of thing that just makes me harumph with apathy. I'm not saying that what's on my ipod's better than any of that pop crap (but it obviously is) but it's just the way that he's just a kid that looks right and sounds right enough for teenage girls to scream over him. I mean, there's a 3 year old girl (granted she's american) that cries because she loves him so much. It's annoying that someone who's basically just a cash cow that'll come and go with the breeze has so much media attention. It's like high school musical, Justin Bieber isn't a muscian he's a fad.

Anyway, so because I'd be quite happy if the next bit of media about him was that he'd died (or perhaps not, as they'll probably play his music even more on the radio as a tribute, it'd probably be better if he disgraced himself by sleeping with one of his fans and breaking the law (as I can't imagine anyone over the age of consent appreciates his existance other than the people that profit from him)) I decided to make a film about killing him.

I made the props myself from balloons, a biscuit container, paper mache and some of my own hair that I had lieing around:








I then enlisted the help of Jack and Coral to create my film:



After filming, to celebrate we went out and scared some people, here are some photographs of people wearing the Justin Bieber masks:









They all look quite creepy, sort of like Cartoon Head from Ideal but more surreal because they're more human.

Anarchy in the UK

This was a really fun project, basically invent a high concept band and design 12", 7" and cassette cover art work for it.

My initial idea was a metal band that uses a lot of runes. I should've known that's been done to death, so I dropped it.

My next idea was trance music that puts you into a coma, inspired by the artwork I'd created whilst under the effects of Methoxetamine which is legal drug.





The problem was I stuck with the artwork I'd created too much, instead of looking instead at what I was really doing, which was TRANCE music that put you into a COMA.





So I went to a trance rave and a hospital to get some photographs of people raving and hospital beds. I then combined these together, along with a hideous bubble font and my initial concept drawings to create:












The most successful of these images is the single cover, where I made a breathing thing out of filter tubes and took the photo of myself just after I'd woke up so I had messy hair (like people in comas).

Things to change:
-Lose the zombie nurse, as she doesn't say "TRANCE music that puts you into a COMA" she says undead hospital music, which I'd assume is a different genre entirely (zombie nurse backing singers and skeleton doctors with guitars made out of bones, it'd probably be like dull, all consuming heavy metal).

-Change the font to something that says trance music more, I've already experimented with this

-The title tracks are all inspired by what I wrote under the influence of methoxetamine, I ought instead to look at words that say coma, as the methoxetamine reference only relates to me. I've tried this as well as the new font on my single cover:








I like this quite a lot, my current plan is to bring the other pieces up to this stage. Current ideas are someone (most likely me again) passed out with big head phones on for the album. I may keep some of the trippy art work, but only if the image already says: COMA TRANCE. I mean, the stalagtite image on the back of the single just looks like a turd.

I've fixed some of the problems I had with this project before, here's how it looks now:














The poster is the most drastic change, but there's still problems (as there naturally would when you've already spent 30 quid on a project and just can't wait to spend more.) like when I printed it the backgrounds went really shit, which is weird. I also forgot to save the changes to the cassette tape inlay, which means it still has all the old track names in the old hand written style on there, which is a massive annoyance.

This project's getting there, but it still isn't what I wanted it to be. I did borrow my mates camera to get some better photographs, and it just highlights how peck my camera is now. For drawing from there's no issue, but large prints just seem to come out looking abysmal, and I need to figure out whether it's cheaper to continue printing out bad quality work because I'll "fix it" when I get a better camera and pay to do everything twice, or just get a good camera. The thing is next year I'll be living with 3 people who all own DSLR cameras, so I just can't justify it when there's 3 to choose from, unless we find ourselves at a photography convention I don't know how the 3 of them would need them all at the same time, and I wouldn't go to a photography convention anyway.

My Favourite Dress

The brief here was to design and make a dress for a girl I know. This was one of those projects that just made my head explode. I hate sewing, and I'm not a fan of fashion (I can appreciate it's a skill, just not one that I'm really interested in at all), AND the girl that I would have had in mind was no longer my girlfriend, so I left it and left it.

Then it occured to me that I know a girl who does fashion, and that she'd be the perfect candidate to design my dress for, as anything I needed help with she'd be the person to go to, and I also had this notion that she'd spent all her time designing dresses for other girls to wear, perhaps she'd like a chance to model herself (I later discovered that posing for photographs was her worst nightmare, so I was somewhat off the mark with the "chance to model herself" idea, but the rest was right).

So I waited for Chloe to return after the christmas holidays and we got cracking. The only problem was that Chloe's sleeping pattern was the opposite to mine, she'd turned nocturnal over the holidays, but there were a few hours (between about 9pm and 2/3 in the morning) where we had a cross over point of both being awake.

As Chloe is quite a dark person (she likes somewhat macabre things (not to an extreme, she isn't a goth) and has a somewhat sinister sense of humour) and a little out of control sometimes we decided that a dark colour (black or charcoaly) would be right, and to show her crazyness we'd try to use a straight jacket for inspiration, and adding a hood would up the sinisterness of it.










I'm really happy with the dress. Chloe admittedly did most of the sewing (I was told that sewing is something that can't really be undone very well, and with my limited funds I couldn't really afford for it to go wrong) but I helped out with all the rest of it. Originally I'd wanted more buckles, as they show the straight jacket feel the most, but money was a limiting factor and so only 1 on each arm and one on the back were possible. I like how it can be worn in a variety of ways, hood up, hoody down, arms through the sleeves, arms through the shoulders, and all tied up if you wanted.

The rest of the photos from our modelling shoot (which was a horrible experiance for Chloe, but quite fun for me) are below: