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!!!