tutorial to inspire

So I had a bunch of drawings and had scanned them in but I had no idea where to go from there. I had a group tutorial and brought in all my work so far and ask for help deciding what direction to go. They asked me who I would be designing for and what kind of clothes. I had no idea so we discussed what I could do to maybe inspire a topic.

They suggested that the designs of the cells would look really interesting keeping them delicate on fabric. I went away and put my 6 cells onto a screen and later I devored them and tried foiling with holographic foil. The idea of the cells being almost like a second skin interested me. We had talked in the tutorial about keeping the fabric light and sheer so I brought the devore satin and another devore fabric to trial. The designs worked well, they looked nice of the white fabric. I didn't want to colour them as I liked the subtle was that would colour only just see them in the light. Adding colour might make them too bold. I also did some holographic foiling which was inspired by the thermal imagery that I had been looking at. The holographic fabric allowed the cells to change to all sorted of colours as you moved it around. Again I did like the fabric samples but I wasn't sure that I knew what I wanted the make out of them yet, sure I could make a fabric with cells on to represent the body but I didn't really think this was interesting or new and inspiring.

I went back to the tutorial feeling deflated, although I had done some nice work the idea wasn't coming together for me yet and I wasn't feeling that my plan had a strong concept. So we talked about a second skin and what it could be, we discussed shadows and movement and how I could achieve this.

I went on the laser cutter for the first time ever after that tutorial. I brought my cell illustrations and we etched them into acrylic. I loved them, they were so delicate and subtle and looked great on the acrylic because you could just see through them with the other designs under neither. I felt inspired and couldn't wait to get home to try and shine a light through them and project them onto the body. I loved the idea of a second skin that wasn't really there but the pattern or design was. The acrylic cells created some really interesting patterns on the body and I could see my idea coming to shape in front of my eyes. These tutorials were very helpful in getting me to understand what I wanted to create but also to get me to trial new things like the laser cutter that I had never been on before.