Week 19

Day One

Today I wanted to focus on using the laser cutter, I had never used the laser cutter so was very eager to experiment with the tool. First U went to Berwick street to find some fabric that I could use, I knew what colours I wanted, as there was a clear theme from my research. I looked at many different fabrics a majority of them were out of my budget especially for a sample as they were silks, however I found suitable replacements that were much cheaper. My fabric was satin Acetate, which I acquired in red, blue and orange. Then once at Ravensbourne I started to create the digital files I needed for the laser cutter. These were based on the initial prints I had made last week. Then I took these to the laser cutter. As I had never used it before I had a brief tutorial and realised that it was simpler than I had expected. I cut out four samples, one set was of a repeated coca cola logo pattern that had been cut out and also engraved and I did the same for a repeated random dragon print. They came out very successful although I had not anticipated for how long this task would take, this was due to my designs being complex in their detail which I learnt was not needed as I reduced the scale of them when I cut them.

Day Two

With the laser cutting samples finished and the deadline tomorrow I began to do some final developed designs that would enable me to progress onto my final designs. For my quick developed designs I focused solely on shape, as I would introduce my samples, prints and fabrics in later. My developed designs allowed me start designing my final line up. So towards the end of the day I had designed my finals, I scanned them in so I could edit them digitally however I started having problems with cutting the shapes on Photoshop, I ended up loosing a lot of time on this. Assessing my problem I decided I would draw them out again but in a thicker black pen as this should allow me to cut around them more successfully on Photoshop. This solution did work for me so before the day ended I was able to edit a majority of my designs, ready to be finished in the morning before my critique.

Day Three

This morning I finished off my line up and added in my colours and fabrications as well as my prints. I had decided to develop my prints when applying them onto my line up as my line up would give me a better idea of which prints would work best. Once again I had difficulty with the colours of my line up as they printed out different colours. The critique went reasonably well, I liked my final line up but looking at all of my work over the three weeks it did not work together well and appeared to jump from one idea to another. I feel that this sums up this project well, as although I didn’t have any blocks I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to carry out, which I di. However these ideas weren’t accomplished to the full which resulted with them being left unfinished.