Moving Tides Evaluation

When starting the Moving Tides project I believed it to be the most suited to my possible career aspirations as the action plan curated during professional environment unit, teaching was something I was considering. I wanted to try teaching to see if it was something I would like to look into further, after all, SDP was a chance to take risks and take on a project to direct my own learning. Never once did I expect the parade to be cancelled last minute due to persistant weather warnings. This is probably the worst possible outcome that could happen to an artist – preparing for something it to then be cancelled. Words can’t describe how unexpected and disappointing the news was, as I can imagine the students, teachers and organisers felt too. What was most disheartening was that it was such a lengthy process leading up to the parade so initial thoughts were the ineffective use of everyone’s hard work and time, being a horrible feeling for me as I am usually such an optimist. Once the news had sunk in I started to realise that many positives came out of the experience and it was not a time waster. When starting the project we got stuck in straight away with the workshops involving external practitioners. I feel that throughout it has been very self-directed as it was less about communicating with tutors and more with the professional world such as teachers, students and the steering group. I have learned a great amount about unusal 3D materials, lesson planning and teaching as well as professional aspects that can only be gained and experienced on a live project such as this which is most invaluable. I now have quite an in-depth understanding of the ways in which this environment in works and how it is realised from initial meetings and briefs. The following stages would come next - research and development, importance of prototypes, working by trial and error, budget information and the final ideas/construction of the costumes through to what was meant to be the live parade itself. However, as it got cancelled this taught me that often events involved in the outdoors can experience unforeseen or unexpected difficulty due to inclement weather. This is such a shame and has made me re-evaluate possible career paths as I wouldn't want the potential disruption or to be disapointed by having events cancelled due to our British weather.

Although I have encountered many other mishaps throughout the project I feel it has only benefitted me as a practitioner because without these I may not of learned as much. My patience and time management are my two weak points what I wanted to concentrate on improving with moving tides, as these are vital traits that every designer should be good at! Constructing the the workplan, learning agreement and lesson plans only worked in my favour in terms of time management and organisation and gave me a clear sense of what I wanted and went on to achieve. Although I was stressed at times I think my ability to problem solve even when stressed has been a benefit to me. The experience of teaching was an interesting one as I didn't know what to expect and at times encountered slight frustration but ending up thoroughly enjoying it as my designs and sessions were received so positively. My patience with both materials and teaching has really improved and what better way to test it than to be in a class of 31 10year olds!

In terms of my professional aspirations, teaching primary was an option, however I have decided against this because I feel I would like to be in a working environment where I work along more experienced creatives. I also missed the in depth conceptual work involved and feel my designing ideas were limited and less complicated because of considerions to audience and who I was working with. However, it has made me more certain on still being in a hands on environment. It was an amazing opportunity to be involved in and was a pleasure to work with people who really appreciated my hard work and receiving such praise and compliments was a massive booster, helping me have confidence in my own work which I do not always feel. Both children and adults involved seemed really satisfied and inspired at the outcome by the last session, and I was equally pleased that I had achieved my aim of helping to produce 31 bright costumes which could be worn with comfort and recognizable because of the bright bold colors from near and far, perfect for carnival. With it being a live project there are bound to be some unexpected issues and I think I have used my initiative when necessary, and although I made some mistakes, I have acknowledged and learnt from them, preparing me for the next self directed project broadening my knowledge of another form of performance. The parade is hopefully going to be postponed to a September date which would be fantastic as it makes the project a lot more exciting for both them and me to see the costumes in action!!

Group Photo!!

The highlight of any project for me is seeing the final outcome! and this was definitely mine!! ^^ This is a few of the students posing in their costumes so far when they parading around the playground. Collectively I am super pleased with how they all look as a sea of monsters together, each session has met the aims I wanted for each of them however I am a bit worried about the flimsyness of the tentacles on the collars (falling down in the wind?) and also the elastics on the masks, as the children cut the elastic too tight and some have pinged off causing the plasterzote to rip. I have arranged with the tutor to go in for a day and possible put sticks behind the tentacles and sort out the elastic as well, and hopefully after this it will all look even better together! 
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Constant Problemossss

I encountered a range of what may be seen as problems, but what I see as ‘learning curves’, because with a project with such a nature as Moving tides there is no specific right way to construct a costume, it is all about trial and error and experimentation with 3D materials. My first problem was designing the costume too simply. With the idea in my head that I would be teaching children how to make it, I tried to make it uncomplicated which is something I find difficult, as all my usual designs are very experimental and complicated, however, not having taught children before I didn’t know how easy or hard to make it. After the steering group said this, I knew straight away that I could do much better and went back to the drawing board and came up with a design which I thought a lot more successful and aesteciacally pleasing, and much more suited to the idea I wanted to portray – the disgusting sea monster. After this, came more problems with the mask I wanted to create. 

The design I had was inspired by various artists and characters from programmes/films and i wanted to make a mask. I thought the best way to do it was to make a clay version first, then a plaster mould and then a plaster cast because of the fact I would have to vac form 31 of these it would be better to be a more stable material. However, stupidly didn’t put enough Vaseline onto the clay and the plaster mould would not come off, with help from the technician we cracked it off, but was too complicated to glue back together, therefore started all over and made a new clay version. I altered this version slightly though as I was quite paranoid the mask looked slightly falic again! This time put plenty of Vaseline onto the clay, the plaster came off a lot easier, and then the plaster cast worked out very well !!

I practised using the vac form machine using HIPS plastic in black and it worked well, the shiny texture looked really great. So went ahead and ordered HIPS plastic in green in the right thickness. So it arrives… It was a great colour green and I got really excited that I could finally vac form these masks. Excitement over. The plastic is far too thin and brittle for the machine and expecially for my detailed mask. Every time I attempted to put it off the mould it would crack at the slightest tug. This is not appropriate for a mask let alone one that 10 year old boys will be handling!! I began to get really worried about what I was going to do and couldn’t actually see this problem being overcome as the materials had already been ordered! I considered using see through plastic for free from the workshop, (which wouldn’t have the desired effect) or white plasterzote which was free from the scrap store and painting it, again, wouldn’t look as effective as a green mask, and also really flimsy. I was counting on the green plasterzote that ordered from Hindleys to make the tentacles with and was hoping I had ordered enough!

To solve the problem: Vac formed 31 masks using the dark green plasterzote from Hindleys (because it was thin it took some getting used to using in the vac form machine as it heats up so quickly and burns easily!). This meant all of the tentacles could not be used in green plasterzote as there was not enough so made a decision to do 3 of these in free white plasterzote and 2 in coloured, as I thought the masks were more important to be coloured. Luckily all the costumes look really good and varied with the colours and the paints which I am really pleased about, and it just shows that when your on a budget, and doing the budgeting sheet beforehand its really hard to foresee how much of the materials you actually need. So for future reference I will consider really in depth and detail the measurements and qaunitites of materials I will need as well as make sure i dont order materials until I receive all samples!!!

Final Beechcroft Workshop - Pulling everything together

This forth and final lesson was the pulling together of all components to make one full costume for each student. It was a relaxed session (that was a first!) where the children added trimmings to the Tshirts neckline and then one by one worked with me to use a Hot Glue gun to put their tentacles onto the collars they had made. With the collars being the most unsuccessful part in my opinion I was slightly worried about how they were going to look with the tentacles attached, but they actually look really good and the tentacles seem to cover the parts that were not done very well. I also attached the elastic loops on either side of the collar so that the cotton tape could be threaded through in order for them to be stable on the neck and shoulders. This seemed to be the best way of putting the collar on the children and the comfiest that I tried where it loops under the armpits and ties around the back, this allows them to have freedom with their arms and upper body, and after trying all different ways and getting tutor advice this was the best and most successful way to be worn.

^^ Examples of the variety of different collars on each student and how they have customized them differently to make them their own...

The final lesson was brilliant and being able to see the enthusiasm and excitement from the children was great. At the end of the session they all wanted to parade around the playground in their outfits. The next stage for them is for a choreographer to come into the school and teach them a dance related to the 'sea monster' idea. This would be the routine that they will perform in the parade. The Moving Tides project that I set them seems to of been very beneficial in terms of creativity. It allowed them to learn more techniques and processes that they have never tried before and actually enticed a lot more students interest in the project than you would of thought it initially would. I think they were all satisfied with what they had achieved because with it being a live project they know how important the costumes are and tried their best so knowing all this hard work goes towards something makes a project a lot more exciting for both them and me!

Beechcroft Workshop 3 - Tshirt reveal, Decoration of Tentacles/masks and Paper mache collar...

Today was demanding! I thought this would be a pretty simple session but little did I know how difficult it would be to teach and oversee 31 children doing paper mache! As I have said before, the ability in this class is completely different where some children find it difficult to come to grips with learning new skills and others   just get on with it really well with very little help...

The first part of the session was the reveal of the Tie dyed Tshirts which were done two weeks before. Buckets of water were put in the playground and they were to wash the Tshirts clean until no green dye came out. Everyone was very well behaved during this process and were all really pleased with their creations, apart from one student whose Tshirt was mainly white with green circles, she was unhappy with this Tshirt however I thought it looked great and made her stand out from all the other children whose were mainly green. I love how varied all the students look and really pleased that they had their own creative input into their costumes...  

After break I handed out bits and bobs from the scrap store that they could choose to decorate their tentacles with. Because of the problems that occurred when I realised I didn't have enough white Plasterzote and the tentacles that I had made broke in half, I made some extra tentacles but in coloured plasterzote which they also had to decorate. As well as the revealing to the Tshirts it was also a chance to show the outcome of the latex experiments. I think the reaction of the children was shock, as they couldn't grasp the concept of how it was all going to work out as the latex was obviously white and watery the last time they saw it. I explained what latex is usually used for (in terms of prosthetic and special effects) which taught them a completely new approach and skill to work and create the gloopy texture for the mask and use this technique that I wanted to recreate throughout the whole of the class of masks. The latex pieces and the scrap store decorations needed to be glued on the masks and tentacles....Which meant that glue guns would need to be used which meant health and safety measures had to be in place such as goggles and only a certain number of children completing it, as well as keeping a careful watch on all the students as many things could possibly go wrong when hot appliances are involved... 

The students got on with this fantastically  and you could see how pleased they were once this has was all done and really keen to get on with the collars. With the demonstration of the paper mache on the collars I made sure I was really clear on the instructions, however because it was tissue paper I was using rather than newspaper it was harder to wrap around the wire frames because if it became to wet the tissue paper would rip so there was a certain technique to it, and one that clearly the children found hard to grasp. We started the paper mache after lunch and it took up until the end of the day to finish, when actually some didnt even finish. The class in my opinion was actual mayhem with many students needing assistance and some taking so long to even start it. I have learnt during just this half of the session how challenging teaching can be, when a task is difficult and more than just a small group need help it can cause havoc. Luckily enough I had the main year 5 teacher and art tutor to help me assist the children and without them I wouldn't of been able to complete the lesson. I am glad I went forward with this lesson as it has taught me again never to assume what children can do and make sure its not too challenging that they don't enjoy themselves... 

Mass production to the mass!!!

Masks and Tentacles


As well as having to make the plasterzote masks I also have had to make approx 150 tentacles out of both white and green plasterzote. I obviously didn't think this through when designing because this is a lot of pre production that I have had to take on myself. If I were to do this project again I would design something which could mostly be done in the lessons because in the working world I would be getting around £200 a day to be a visiting artist and I wouldnt want this to include the pre production as well as the lessons. However, I am not getting paid this much money and IT IS for my project so I don't mind as much because I want them to look the best they can, and what I am doing before the sessions are things to do with structure of the costume which children would not be able to do...

^ Thats not even the half of all of the tentacles!!!!!

Wire collars 

I have spent the past week making the wire collars ready for session 3, and I am so relieved they are done. Having to complete 31 wire collars using the spot welder in an empty workshop when the sun is shining outside is not the best way to spend nearly 4 days sweltering in the heat. But it had to be done! At first I found it quite hard to come to grips with so took a lot of patience.


The spot welder was the best option to make these collars because it welds the rods together making it all very strong and sturdy rather than flimsy and flexible. It became easier the more I produced and after a day I realised that drawing a diagram with measurements and then cutting the rods to the exact lengths worked better and made the welding go a lot quicker. Almost like a production line with myself !! :)

The above photo Is the shape I decided on using because of the comfort when placed around the neck and shoulders because of the curve. I am glad I tried out different ways and shapes of doing the collar though because it was all trial and error to see what did and didn't work. This is an example of having to come up with creative solutions to fit a problem and especially when constructing them not knowing what method I was going to use in the end. I got the main collar idea from the kinetika workshop but didn't follow their insructions of how to make it or use the the same materials, as I wanted them not made from just brown paper and flimsy wire, but really loved the shape, so experimented with this idea and came up with my own version :)

Beechcroft Workshop 2 - Painting masks, Tentacles and Latex Experimentation

Because of the speed that the students completed the last session in, I learnt from this and made sure there was plenty to do this session as I have a full day with them... Again I had so many materials to carry into the school, however, there was no way around this so just something I have to get used to! I had 120 Thin plasterzote tentacles, 31 Green plasterzote masks, a Huge bottle of latex and the bits and bobs to experiment with. 


The reception I have received from the children so far is great! They were even more enthused about this session knowing that there would be a lot of creative work to get messy with and that many of the parts of the costume would be finished by the end of this session. There have been numerous questions before they had even sat down on the carpet.. "Kirsty what part are we doing today?" "Are we making the tentacles?" "When will it all be finished??" showing their keeness to the project that they are itching to get started. 


I had been warned prior to this lesson that whatever coloured paints you give to children, they will always want different ones, (one child said "why do we have to be green? cant I be red?") or mix all the colours they have and make one lovely grey/brown sludge of a colour!! However, some masks did turn out really really well and some of the children were neat, careful and really took care of the presentation, this just shows the difference in artistic ability in the class, but however able they       are, everyone seemed to enjoy painting the masks, so I guess that is what matters. I am no way near a perfectionist, but working with children who have a short attention and concentration span has made me quite a fusspot about my work, and find myself trying to help them more than necessary. The teacher of the class also told me that you just need to let them get on with it as they have their own idea of what is perfect to them. To the left are some examples of the variety of masks that they have created....


The next stage in the costume making process was to paint the tentacles. This was not a difficult task (or so i thought) however, got extremely messy and didn't help when a number of children decided to rip off their aprons. I'm sure their mums weren't best pleased with green children arrived home! But having 120 painted tentacles lying on the table was very satisfying indeed!!

The experimentation was the last part of the session and I thought I made a good choice in taking this session in two parts with half the class at a time




Now that I have completed two workshops sessions I think my confidence in teaching has really improved. I feel like I really get on with children now and think that they are learning to respect me and my teaching. I have learnt that when I am demonstrating the next step, I need to be extremely clear about EXACTLY what I want to be done, as this will grab those who lack concentration's attention and benefit me from explaining myself numerous times.

Beechcroft Worshop 1 - Fringing and Tie Dying Tshirts

Today marked the first day of the workshops working with a year 5 class at Beechcroft primary school in Weymouth. First of all, the carrying of the materials was a nightmare! Already I can see that this will be a regular occurance everytime I do one of these lessons as for each lesson preparations need to be made which are a lot to carry into the school. This is something I will learn for future projects - do as much work inside of the school premises as possible. However, because of my design and to make it the most successful  structure it wouldn't of been possible for the children to do it ALL themselves so prior preparation) of the wire collars and masks for example) was necessary but means that every lesson I will have loads to bring with me! oops! 


Started the lesson off with an introduction of myself and the project, showing the children my design which went down extremely well! They were all very enthusiastic about the design which was great ! and then I got out my prototype out and asked for a volunteer to try it on and that went down even better! This was a good move - to show them the final outcome - as it gave them something to look forward to and strive towards. 


This session was focused on fringing the T-shirts on the sleeves and the bottoms first of all. I was very shocked at the ability of each child and how much it varied between them all, as some of them found the cutting of the fringing really easy and finished in no time whereas some of them found it hard to grasp cutting a straight line! The teacher had warned me of the spectrum of ability in the class but didn't realise how severe it actually was. Tying knots in the fringing was exactly the same! To overcome this I got those that had finished theirs to help their classmates which worked well. One thing I have learnt already is to never assume what kids can do! Once all those that were struggling recived help from their peers it was fine and had 29 finished fringed and knotted Tshirts ready for dying....

The Tie-dying technique I decided to use with the children was the one where you insert ping pong balls inside of the T-Shirt and using elastic bands or string secure them in and then using the spray bottles with different colored greens and yellows , spray the Tshirts at different points so it makes the overall look more interesting. Once dyed they create circles of different sizes. I thought this would be a more fun technique to do with the students as it takes more time and more thought goes into it rather than the standard dunking into dye.

 The children found this a lot easier than the task before. It was a chance for them to get very very messy (too messy in fact! as some decided to rip their aprons!) but the spray bottles were definitely a good idea as they could customize them in their own way. I have noticed that this is what children seem to like - creative freedom. So giving them tasks where all their creations can be varied was a good choice that I made.... 

I would say a very successful workshop today! The project seems to have been very well received by both the students and teachers and the excitement from everyone is more than I could of hoped for! It was definitely a confidence boost for my personal project and hope that the forthcoming lessons will be as well received :) For the next session I will consider the timings and how long I think this ability group of children will take to complete all tasks necessary (especially considering I have 4 whole lessons, I dont want the children to become bored or pushed for time).  

Final finished Prototype!!

After all of my drama with the plaster cast mould of the mask and the plastic to make the masks, as well as the time consuming task of making the collars and tentacles (actually a lot quicker than I would of thought) I have finally finished my prototype and all of the mass producing of the components for the costume too!! :) I feel so pleased and relieved to of completed this and now feel satisfied with my Squid design. I always said that I wouldn't feel completely assured until I had achieved the 3D version. Doing this project has really made me aware that I need to at least have samples or visions in front of me to in order to be certain and content with my designs. I feel that as a practitioner I have improved in becoming more confident in my own designs which people have always told me to do but for some reason I never end up thinking that I have done that well. I think it is important to feel  self assured when creating or designing in this industry as you need to be able to talk confidently about them but at the same time able to take constructive criticism. I believe that receiving criticism makes me a better designer and more likely to achieve a successful project because it will be more related to the clients brief and exact specifications, who are the people you ultimately want to impress... 


I have taken on board all advice that has been given to me during the whole process and have made relevant changes where necessary to make my design better.... 

Head shot of the mask decorated with paint, latex and bits and bobs from the  scrap store.
The plasterzote has turned out a lot more successful than the plastic ever would of. I am so pleased that I had an alternative, even if I didn't plan for this to be an alternative when ordering!

Tentacles made thin free plasterzote then using System3 paint  and PVA mixed together to  cover the white. Hopefully the children do well with painting and decorating them to make them all look consistent and bold...

Experimenting with materials for collar piece..

Like I have said previously I find it hard to vision what a design looks like until I start it in 3D first, so I have started to try out options for the mask and collar piece. This is mainly to work out sizes and wondered whether garden wire would work or not. In our workshop on the Kinetika weekend they showed us this wire bicycle collar which I thought would be great for my design and would be really effective to add to in order to create tentacles coming off of the collar which creates height behind the childs head and frames their face...

<< This collar was created using garden wire from Wilkinsons, I am so glad I tried it out because it actually was far too flimsy for my design and I dont think it would withstand children playing around with it or the wind during the actual carnival....                                                            

I tried using a different type of wire >> which is called galvenised        
wire which can be purchased from B&Q this was a lot thicker and hard to bend however so much more sturdy than the one I had used previously. This is the wire which I will use to make the collars for the lessons, and hopefully be able to use the spot welding machine in the workshop so that I can mass produce them which will be less time consuming (considering I have to make 30!!) in terms of bending the wire around itself to stay in place the spot welder will clamp the metal together and melt it so it is one complete structure...




One section of one of the lessons for the children will be to paper mache these collars with yellow tissue paper. Experimenting with this prototyping has really helped me understand how long things actually take and predict how long they will take the children to do. I feel that I take for granted how quickly I can make things, but understand that they may not be able to do it as quickly as me, so whilst doing this prototyping have taken note of timings and in what order everything has to be done and what needs to be planned before. For example, the best way I have realised to paper mache this collar is to rip up quite large strips prior to the lessons and then they have to paper mache the collar in sections and wrap around each part to make it stronger..  I am really pleased I have started doing this before collating the lesson plans... 


These are the plasterzote tentacles that I have made using the Vac form machine. First of all I did a clay sculpt of them and then Vac Formed these using plastic and then made Plaster mould of the tenticles so they will be able to go in the Vac forming machine over and over again. On Each collar there will be 4 tenticles meaning I have to create 120!!!! Before the lesson, this again, has been beneficial in curating lesson plans, as I know that this will have to be a later session in the month so I have enough time to make all of these before they decorate them...




This photo is an example of how the the face will be framed by the tentacles around it, I feel that the structure I have created with wire is not wide enough yet and doesn't rest on the shoulders correctly, so may have to alter the pattern of the collar so that I get the shape I want...

Tutorial - Initial ideas

Basing my

Budgeting and Ordering of materials

Another reason of why I chose to do the Moving Tides project was so that it could give me a taster of managing a budget and taking part in roles like this which will be transferrable in any career I decide to take on after. The budget I was allowed to spend was £10 per student and £15 per Dance leader. This you would think was quite a lot of money considering I have 30 students to buy for, but it is quite fascinating how quickly this money went down once all the vital materials had been ordered! There is a lot of logistics involved in this project , mainly because it is a live project and other people are depending on me, but everything has to be thought through thoroughly, with the design process and budgeting going hand in hand. I feel this has really improved my organisational skills already (which is what I wanted to improve in this project!) and there is a stress upon the 'forward thinking' and being super responsible and careful about all decisions that I make. This will continue once I start the actual ordering of materials and components as I need to make sure all my receipts of expenses are collected and organised, (a role which costume supervisors usually take on so gives me a taster of this role also!) The prototype however will be financed by me, as the materials I doubt will of arrived in tie, and I want to start protoyping as soon as I get back in the workshop! Nothing will become clear in my head until I see it 3D. I honestly wish I would of started to prototype prior to doing the budget plans, as this would of made me more confident that all materials I have chosen to order will work. However, this can only be a lesson to be learnt for me for future projects, is to prototype whilst designing as it will make more sense in my head of what does and does not work, and a chance to make final decisions a lot sooner than I usually would, however I do feel its been a great experience of the processes involved in delivering workshops in schools and the timescales and order each activity...

Below is the financial information to be ordered. There are the materials which will provide the basis for the costume and also 'bits and bos' from the scrap store and Wilkinsons for the students to decorate and pesronalise their own costumes, I think this is reallly important that they have their own creative flair within the design so it is unique for them and makes them think about the placement of decoration. This is something I will include in my lesson plans which need to be done soon also,,,,

Design sent to Teacher ...

Sooo a step forward... I have now sent my developed design to the teacher at the school! This was a big weight off my shoulders as I felt a little stressed about it after the steering group comments. But seeing it drawn out on paper has made me really envisage what it is going to be like in real life and feel quite confident that a sea of children are going to look great if it all goes well with the making. I still would like to add a bit more to the design, and scan it into photoshop to add shading and also add another part to it showing the dance leaders headdress, but I think this was a good start to send to the teacher. He seems really positive about the design which is comforting and says his class are really excited about my workshops!!  However, I will not be completely confident about it until my prototype is done because knowing it works in 3D is what matters the most. So no time like the present, I am going to start prototyping ASAP!!

Nightmare with the mask mould!

After all of the technician in the workshops advice about how they thought I should make the mould, I didn't end up putting enough vaseline onto the clay version and when the plaster did actually dry it was really hard to get the clay out, which meant we had to smash the mould off the clay. We tried really hard to recover it, almost like a puzzle but the pieces just weren't making sense! So i weighed up the amount of time it would take me to make a new clay mask and how long to put the plaster mould back together, and it worked out less time and effort to make a new clay mould in the next couple of days ready for when the plastic needs to be ordered... I also decided after advice from the technician that I should use beads or small balls for the bumps on the head, as it makes the texture of the mask more consistent and the plastic is more likely to stretch over the bumps rather than my own home made clay versions. I have basically redesigned the mask all over again. But this time I am a lot more content with my decisions...

Moulding for the mask...

After the comments received from tutor and steering group and the fact that they both thought I could do better with my design I thought about scrapping the hat and making a mask which is more suited to the gloopy/scary sea monster idea I wanted to create because actually I know that the small eye mask wasn't the best idea and I was thinking too simply... I have decided to change this and make a mask which has been more inspired by my research as there are many artists I have looked at (images in sketchbook) who have used tentacles as an influence...

I started off by using clay to create a mould of the mask initially by sculpting the clay on top of a clay face. I got some advice from a make up tutor about the best way to do it and tips about making it okay to use in the vac form machine.

Above is the first test of using the vac form machine and plastic. I put the clay into the machine, it got sqaushed slightly so i knew that for the final design for the mask I will have to create a plaster mould so that it would be strong enough to vac form 31 masks.... I think this mask is quite a successful first attempt however, I wanted the head to be a lot more purtruding so it will look more monster like rather than just fitting onto the face, I want it to be coming above the forehead.



Below is the clay sculpture of the next stage of the mask with the pertruding head making it look more monster like and strange. I am going to try it out with all different types of plastic and materials to see which one works, however, think I might stick to the plastic as I know its a safe option and have found a good place to get a good price on the green HIPS plastic.



I already feel that I am learning more about my practical techniques as I have not worked with clay before and am really enjoying the experimentation side of it and finding solutions to various problems...