Week 5
As part of the core modules each of the MA students have been asked to put together a 5 minute presentation and to create a poster or something that represents their practice. The below are images from my presentation where i discussed my previous practice and working roles and then went on to explain my poster which I created to express a feeling of new discovery and opportunities and how I am taking my learning into this new environment. I included my Manifesto to set my intentions throughout the course to endeavour to commit to finding solutions for a better tomorrow and to be considerate within my design process and application.
Over the two week it was really lovely to hear about the other students practice and what their intentions are for the year, I was particularly interested with the World Building & Animation students as I see how our work and ideas connect and I can see a great potential for collaborations.
Progress to Date
For the following week I’ve put together my research and learning which I thought would be beneficial to start to collate the work in a way that could be used for the final hand in, some of the pages are just in their infancy and will develop as I explore them further in the coming weeks.
Laser Cutting in CLO3D
As I’ve been unable to start the laser cutting in the physical form I thought it would be good practice to experiment with cutting into pattern pieces in CLO3D. For my initial experiment I inputed lots of cut lines to the front of the skirt but as these aren’t shapes and aren’t connected to the external skirt seams the cut’s weren’t able to be made so I turned the gather property on to create an effect that gathered in the front of the skirt. I moved to the back of the skirt and duplicated the piece, removing out the top section and making numerous offsets at regular intervals which I then cut open. As I wasn’t able to cut out my 1st lines I’d created I decided to take a dress block and and create some internal shapes that I then cut away. This made me realise that I may be able to open the files I already had ready for laser cutting and once opened I was able to select the internal shapes and cut these pieces away, however some of the shapes weren’t identified and I wasn’t able to find out how to select these. I experimented with draping the pieces on the avatar and duplicating and building up the pieces. I also changed the fabric quality for the last images into a leather for a structured controlled look. Having the files with the cuts made the software very slow so it felt frustrating at times.
Pattern Cutting in CLO3D
To keep up to date with using CLO3D I realised that it would be good practice to pattern cut within the programme and rather than try to design I used the Pattern Magic Book and the block that was provided. I started by scanning the block and taking it into Illustrator, where I was able to use the pen tool to follow the lines and create a copy of the front and back block. I imported the file into CLO3D and increased the scale by 100% as instructed and after making a full pattern (left and right) I was able to place it around the avatar using the attachment points and made sure to sew all darts and seams. I’d selected an avatar that had sizing similar to the block requirements and I’d made some slight adjustment to the waist and bust so once the block was on I proceeded to check that it fit as expected. I joined the front c/f seams so the front was one pattern and made slight adjustments to the neckline prior to creating a circle shape that met at the bust dart points and was central to the C/F, by adding a connecting line from the neck line to the circle I was able to make cuts to open the block and maintained a join to the body on a 1/4 of the circle and closed the bust darts but I struggled to figure out how to fully close the waist darts to I pivoted it into a french dart postition. I further created a pocket detail with stitching to enhance the new shape.
Nakamichi, T. (2010). Pattern magic. London: Laurence King.
Following onto the next example I further cut style lines into the pattern and closed the appropriate dart and joined seams lines
Blender
I became a bit obsessed with the course this week as I was really excited with the tools I was being shown so I spent alot of time using Blender. The course covered the sculpting tools and I managed to change a sphere into a fly like looking shape (not my intention!!) we went through the use of all of the sculpting tools and by looking at the grid of the object I was able to see how the shapes polygons were being affected and how the smaller the polygons the better the detail became. The course also showed how to use a UV map to reduce the file size by laying the map over a reduced file size version to create an almost identical effect.
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