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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Final eval

My original aim with this project was to explore the idea of perfectionism/atelophobia and its effect on myself as an artist. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to create some form of costume from my exploration. I researched into the idea of perfection in different cultures, how other creative minds perceived perfectionism and how it affected them, all of which was negative as I was unable to find anyone who felt as though their perfectionism helped them in their creative endeavours, and imagery and symbolism associated with both perfection and darkness to use within the creation of my final piece.

 I came up with a few ideas such as creating a dark character to oppose the perfect one and to do a film destroying something I had worked on to show the pointlessness of trying to create something perfect. But in the end, I settled on the idea of creating a costume that would be worn by a personification of atelophobia/or perfectionism to give form and face to what haunts an artist most. 

There were two hurdles I had to overcome in this creative process, the first being designing. I started off by trying to design my costume as a whole but everything I was coming up with did not look like an other-worldly creature ,but rather a weird outfit you would see at a festival. This was disheartening, because at this point, I was unable to accurately portray the theme I was aiming for. To combat this, I decided to instead design the costume in separate parts, starting with the feet and working my way up to the head. This worked a lot better for me because I was able to focus on what I wanted one part of the costume to look like at a time, incorporate my research into symbolism and imagery and not feel overwhelmed whist doing so. 

 The second hurdle was feeling as though I had bitten off more then I could chew with deciding to create an entire costume. In past projects I had only ever made parts of a costume, and every now and again I would look at the workload I had made myself out of pure ambition, and worry I wouldn’t be able to live up to my own standards. This is something that falls directly in line with the theme of my project, because as I was trying to portray the demon that is perfectionism, I was becoming overly stressed and worked up by trying to make this project perfect. This one was a little harder to fight; I had to rely on my friends and family to keep me on the right path and tell me when to accept how things where turning out and move on so that I could keep on track with my time plan.

 If I could improve anything, I think it would have to be my evidencing. I feel as though when, in the thralls of the creative process, I get carried away and forget that I need to take photograph to evidence my work. I was able to scrape together enough to show my process, but there were bits that I missed and would have liked to have shown because I worked hard on them. But I really think I managed my time well and didn’t have to rush any part of my project.

 My final outcome was well executed and really helped me explore my own perfectionism in a way that only tackling it head-on could. And from this I have come to the conclusion that I will never reach anything that I would consider perfect, and I am at peace with that, and overall I am proud of what I produced, and think it is an accurate representation of the demon known as perfection.

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Atelophobia

The fear of imperfection. The fear of never being good enough.

This costume is my personal imagining of what the personification of Atelophobia or perfectionism would look like to me. He is a beautiful creature made of untouched white, delicate lace and pure feathers which makes him look angelic though he also sports a set of curved horns and cloven hooves. He maybe beautiful but he is undoubtedly a demon who takes joy in haunting an artist with their unachievable desire of perfection, he is unattainable and untouchable, and he always stands just a step out of your reach.

This is a demon, I believe, all artists have the misfortune of meeting throughout their creative endeavours, the most hindering trait in an artist is perfectionism because perfection is subjective. You may feel as though you are reaching for a creature you will never catch, but I assure you, another artist will see him standing right beside you.

Stilt attempt #2 

For my second attempt at making the digitigrade stilts i decided to used a simpler approach of forming them round a pair of boots. 

the boots i used for this was an ugly pair of size 8 women’s boots from primark, and i took the heel off using a saw, hammer and a chisel. I though that the shoes would be pretty easy to take apart because they where cheep but it actually took me a good 2 hours to take them off which actually meant that the shoes would be sturdier then originally thought.

Next i had to open up the top of the shoe, and take out the bottom so that i could glue and screw the wooden blocks to the toe of the shoe to make them actual stilts and give me something to mould the hoof around. At this point i tried them on because there was no point in going any further if they where not going to work. and HALLELUJAH!THEY WORK! only thing wrong was that the shoe still needed gluing back together that the heel of the shoe was a little to flimsy. for the shoe i was able to just hot glue it back together, it was going to be covered any way so there was no point in neat stitching. And for the heel i already had a plan i used pvc plastic pipe to create something for the back of the heel to slightly rest on so that it wouldn’t be able to move, i measured up my pipe, used a heat gun to melt it slightly and then pushed it into the space it was needed so that it would cool at the right angle. to attach it to the wooden base i planed on using pipe clips but i was unable to find any the right side so instead i ended up putting two screws strait though the pipe and into the wood which actually worked a lot better then i think the clips would have. 

At this point i now have my basic stilt, now i just need to make it look like a hoof. i started by just painting the whole shoe white to hide the pink colour of the shoe, it was going to be paper mache over any way but this just helped to make sure non of that colour would poke though. 

for the hooves i started by cutting out the base shape out of card board with a rectangle cut out in the middle to slip it onto the wooden block of the stilt and hot glue it into place. then i used strips of the same card board to create my basic hoof shape to modroc over then add a layer or two of paper mache to blend the whole thing together and make it sturdier. next i wrapped the whole shoe in bandages to give the impression of fabric used to guard the skin from being rubbed against the armour and causing pain, it also helped blend the shoe into the hoof and the leggings of the costume.

The finishing touches where gluing the boot cover armour to the front of the shoe, wrapping some more bandages around that and gluing the downing feathers ripped from a feather boa under the armour and bandages to give the effect of animal fur, completing the stilts 

The mask 

When designing the mask the first thing i had to decide on was weather i wanted to leave the full face of the model visible or cover either the eyes or the mouth. i decided pretty quite that i didn’t like the idea of leaving the full face visible so instead i had to weigh up the pros and cons of covering the eyes or the mouth.

if i chose to cover the mouth that would leave the eyes visible and seeing as my model is a actor it would be a good way for him to be able to convey emotion in the  photographs BUT i want this creature to appear inhuman an a very effective way to do that is to take away human emotion so that other people can not sympathise with the creature. so i have decided to go with covering the eyes even though that will hinder one of the models senses i feel like it will look the best.

(EDIT: I didnt think about the fact that he was also going to be blind foulding him and then sticking him on stilts which would really compromise his balance. too combat this i am going to give him a staff for support 

To create this I started by moulding the mask around a polystyrene wig head using modroc to achieve the head shape. I then used card board, which i cut into different sized strips, rolled up and slotted together to create the mask horns then attached them to the mask using more modroc and i used this to blend then into the mask base.

It was at this point when i hit a snag, I tried the mask on and part of it crumbled off and fell straight into my eye, this really hurt but it was fine and after the whole ordeal was over i decided that i needed to paper mache over the whole mask to make it safer.

And after i had done that i ran into another obstetrical, it didn’t fit. This was a pretty easy fix, i cut up the middle of the mask and pinned them on another more masculine head  giving the mask another two inches and making it a better fit then paper macheing over that again.

next i moved on to the decorations. I covered over the mask with a sheet of lace first to create cohesion between that and the chest piece and then moved on the creating a wire base for the feathers and the roses to stand upright on the mask, i glued the feathers to the mask and to the wire to create the round halo effect with then and then on top of that glued the roses.I again used pearls to hide the glue used to attach the feathers to the mask and wrapped bandages. as a finishing touch i used some more feathers that where ripped off a feather bowa to tuck under the bandages to give the look of a malting bird. then i just needed to add the elastic so that it could be placed on the head i attacked on piece from left to right of the mask and then another from the middle of the top of the mask to the middle of the elastic i had just attached to ensure that the weight of the mask didn’t weigh it down and make it fall forward.

Gareth Pugh 

Gareth Pugh is a London fashion designer known for his use of non traditional materials and “fashion as performance art” designs. Pugh himself describes his designs as being “about the struggle between lightness and darkness." 

I find the way he describes his work to match quite well with  the idea i am trying to portray within my work, and i have taken interest in the way he uses odd and interesting shapes within his work creating something that looks a little less human.

Eval 7

04/06-10/06

This week I purely had to make the belt and take the photos

For the belt I had to stitch a piece of triangular calico and go from there, I was overly sure what I wanted from this all I knew was that I wanted it to affectively cover the waist band of the white leggings I tried first attaching bandagers to the calico which just looked weird and then some lace, but I final decided on cutting the calico into a more rectangular shape and adding a different type of lace, which was simple but it did the job I wanted, to attach it and attached a piece of lace to either side of the belt so that it could be attached with a simple bow in the back.

It wasn’t till I got the day of the photos that I realised I had made the belt to fit my body and not Lucas’s and there for had to tuck the belt into the back of the leggings to attach it. We took the photos in the back ally of Caroline greens dance studio, which I felt would be a good contrast to the perfect white of the costume, not many things had to be altered on the day of the shoot, there was the aforementioned belt and I had to pad  out the frond of the mask with cotton pads because it hurt Lucas’s nose a little and the top of one of the boot covers fell of whist Lucas was getting them on but that was also an easy fix with a little glue, but other then that everything when swimmingly we got some good shots, the stilts where had to get on and off but we managed it and a few feathers where lost in the fight but all that’s left is to edit the photos for the exhibition.

Eval 6

28/05-03/06

This week was a holiday week, but I still planned to complete the stilts, the staff and the nails.

For the stilts I had to create the card board base for the hoof shape, Modroc over it and the paper mache over that and the boot to create a sturdy hoof stilt I then covered the boot with bandagers and glued the armour to the boot and added downing feathers around the hoof to create a fur like effect.

I tried to attach the boot armour using hot glue but that didn’t really work so instead I resorted to tying another bandage around it which held it better and gave a nice coherent look to the silt.

Then I was the staff which was made from a metal pole. I tried to just paint the pole white but that didn’t work because my acrylic paint wouldn’t stick to the smooth surface of the pole, so instead I decided to paper mache over it and then paint it whit e which along with giving me the colour I wanted gave the pole a more wooden like appearance for me to then wrap the ribbon around for the grip, then put a bunch of hot glue in the bottom to stop it slipping on the floor.

I also ordered a glass orb the glue to the top of the staff to give it a more majestic feel but that never arrived.

Last it was the nails which where the easiest I just had to paint a set of stiletto fake nails white which was tedious but didn’t take a lot of effort, though I wish I had had some white polish to do this with instead of having to use white acrylic paint as it probity would have come out better.

Next week all I need to do is create the belt and take the photos.

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