Studio Brief 1 : That's Pants

Initial ideas : Beauty - Make up

Our group looked at what annoyed them within society things we thought were 'pants.' An agreed issue raised was that of beauty, striving for this ideal through make-up.

RESEARCH- Logging my ideas on a word document

http://sites.davidson.edu/anthro/global/2013/03/24/globalizing-womens-beauty/

http://www.globalization101.org/is-beauty-globalized-2/

http://www.dw.de/the-globalization-of-ideal-beauty/a-15968524

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/international/africa/03NIGE.html

http://listcrux.com/top-10-harmful-effects-of-using-cosmetics/

http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/beauty/skin-and-makeup/makeup-affect-your-skin.htm

IDEAS

• globalisation of beauty
• plastic surgery
• skin bleaching
• models
• make up artistry – is it art?
• Celebs slated for natural beauty shots
• Who is it for
• Negative aspects of wearing make up
• Teens wearing make up
• schools that ban make up
• Queen Elizabeth put white make up on her face to cover her scars
• make up a cover up for who we really are?

RESEARCH first recorded use of make up was 6000 years ago in ancient rome and Egypt when wealthy women would paint their nails and massage their face with creams and oils, apply lipstick and eyeliner, and colour their hair. Their make up consisted of mercury – toxic, and white lead which caused lead poisoning.

RESEARCH http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cosmetics

IDEAS - notes

• make up as a costume – character, alter ego
• make up a safety net?
• men who wear make up – drag queens
• make up for film and television
• Religious views on make up - http://www.openbible.info/topics/wearing_makeup
• Child beauty
• beauty pageants
• gypsy kids

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/18/france-votes-to-ban-child-beauty-pageants-_n_3947143.html

•  sexualisation of children

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424462/France-bans-girls-beauty-contests-bid-stop-hyper-sexualisation-children.html
 http://www.france24.com/en/20130918-french-senate-votes-ban-sexualised-child-beauty-pageants/

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Browse/ID72/33013368/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CToys%7C33006252/c_2/2%7Ccat_33006252%7CRole+play%7C33006815/c_3/3%7Ccat_33006815%7CMake-up+and+beauty+toys%7C33013368.htm
Pricey stuff 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/childrens-make-up 
http://www.claires.co.uk/claires-club-beauty/style/fcp-category/list

STEMMED TO THIS :
 Kids should be kids.. not grow up too soon
making kids into adults too fast

RESEARCH http://www.1900s.org.uk/1900s-streetgames.htm

IDEAS

• games kids used to play
• hopscotch conkers marbles etc instead of iphones video games and being stuck indoors. Get some fresh air, play tigs, graze your knee, get muddy
• If its good enough for kids, why cant we still do it? When did we stop playing out? I still like playing curby with my nephew, I get more joy out of it than he does
• poster – encouraging rather than being negative

• the wii generation – computer kids

• playtime favourites lost to a generation

RESEARCH http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/game-is-up-for-hopscotch-1611631

RESEARCH - children as adults

Dressing as celebs - reinactment

 Child models

 Child Beauty pageants

 Honey Boo Boo 

 Toddlewood

 Child Stars - Role Models - Photoshop

Started looking into make up on children

Make up for kids
 a whole shop dedicated into beautifying kids
I experimented quickly on Photoshop with popstars that are role models in today's society for young children that I believe are far too sexualised and portray the wrong message. I added child's faces to these and the words 'ROLE MODEL' to sum up my message. These are not final designs, just playing around.

Brainstorming Ideas as a group

With our message being about children growing up too fast, we decided to think about other ideas that weren't portraying such a negative message but rather encouraging people not to conform to society and be pressured into growing up so sudden. Lauren came up with a really great idea of hosting fake events on posters to capitalise being playful and staying young. These events would be based on games we played as children, something that would be recognisable and would be humorous as a fake poster. 

RESEARCH - Old school Games for kids

Listing games on the internet

TOP 10 GAMES1. Kiss Chase 19%

2. Stuck In The Mud (Tag) 13%

3. Hopscotch 11%

4. Football 11%

5. What's the Time Mr Wolf 10%

6. Conkers 9%

7. Double Dutch Skipping 8%

8. Rounders 7%

9. French Elastic 5%

10. Hide & Seek 3%

Others 4%

TOP 10 GAMES1. Gameboys/hand-held consoles 31%

2. Mobile phone texting/gaming 12%

3. Virtual pets 11%

4. Football 10%

5. Cat's cradle 8%

6. Emailing 7%

7. Yo-yo 5%

8. Top trumps (swap cards) 5%

9. Roller-blading 3%

10. Netball 2%

Others: 6%

We thought of making an A-Z Alphabet style poster of games that were played many years ago or when we were children ourselves, that no one plays anymore. This poster could act as a reminder and boost a positive message to encourage people to continue to play those games.

However, we felt what would be more effective would be to create fake posters advertising events taking place or societies whereby these games were still being played today.

Posters to put around town

Laurens: Blanket fort society

Zatuls: Tea party

Abby's : Conker championships

Mine: Save the furby society

I cut out images of furbys to use as reference along with cupped hands. Cutting them out allowed for me to piece them together and try put together the image I wanted to create. Cupping the furby is like reserving and taking care of it. I then used the light box to draw over the images a couple of times until I got it correct. After scanning my final drawing in I coloured the image with a multiplyer layer on Photoshop. To create the text I used the pen on the cintique and hand written it. As our posters were based on the same theme we included things that were the same despite having our own unique approach to image making. To do this we decided to encorporate similar colours of blue and pink along with the same style of text. I feel I could have experimented more with the text I don't really like it and it is not lined up correctly, looks too hand drawn.

Initially the group planned to all take photographs and make our own mini GIF's that we would then combine together. However, after speaking to them I said that this would make the GIF really skip and not flow as one piece. I also felt that the GIF should be a combination of all of our ideas into one and one single GIF. 

We all planned to meet at Lauren's house who was to set up a den in her front room. The den symbolises youth and included a teddybear picnic. When arriving I put up our posters inside and added some extra dolls. We then photographed the den to use as our A2 poster. 

The making of the den:
We collected images of a den that we created filled with teddybears, princess doll heads, teacups and cake stands. The den was to represent things you do as a child. Inside of this we stuck up our posters and stuck child-like cut out teacups to the bears hands to reinact a teddybear tea party. 

We then took various photographs to piece together as a GIF showing the teddies drinking tea inside of the den. 
Our slogan was don't grow up - but we decided we needed to add another message to this. We searched for quotes about getting old, along with quotes from Peter Pan.

We came across the quote ' Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional .' We felt this delivered our message that growing up too soon is a choice, and that we should all slow down. The relaxed environment of a den takes you back to your childhood - Lauren even slept in it over night! We feel it is a nice positive message to deliver. 

Photographs of the den made :

We are to chose one of these for the final poster 

Lauren later photographed the den and emailed us images that we could possibly use for the poster. I feel that these photographs have not worked very well. A lot of the angles do not work and most were unfocused so it was hard to chose a photograph that summed up our message and also worked well as a really nice image. Myself and Zatul spent a lot of time deciding which worked best. 

We decided between the following 2:

Zatuls favourite

 My favourite

After asking Lauren she opted with image 1. I agree that it is a really colourful photo with more context but I don't think the composition is very interesting and I feel the second image works better as a foreground and background with the focus being on the tea stand. Ideally we needed an image that contained the two. 

Photographs to include in the GIF:

Our GIF

Making of the GIF 

When Zatul initially set up the GIF she included this text on the first and last slide. I think the text was a good idea but I felt that the font she used did not send off a playful, childish vibe that related to the concept. I also felt that because our poster was so colourful that the colours could be more vibrant. 














I looked into different font's online including Disney font's. Disney was a little too predictable. In the end I decided on this font as I felt it was quite cartoony, fridge magnet, playful.

 I made the font multicoloured and showed Zatul what I had done. She was happy with this and felt it worked better. Together we then sat and decided on which colours would work best as a background.

We felt none of them really worked that well and so decided to just leave it white to make the text stand out more. We changed the angles of the text in a few of the slides to make the text look like it was moving. I also asked Zatul to change the pace of some of the slides, particularly the text pieces so that the viewer would have more time to read it. It was too fast. Also she had included images that made the GIF skip and jump and not work well as a sequence. 

We re-made the whole GIF together deciding on which images worked best and flowed more. I think at this point it would have been nice to of had more of an input from the rest of the group. Technically I feel myself and Zatul spent all of the time on creating the GIF and poster in the actual making of it. Lauren then printed out the poster.

Final GIF

Looking back on this now it appears that the two slides of text are in the wrong place, it should read 

'Growing old is mandatory.... Growing up is optional' but it is the other way round. 

A2 Photographic image

With my choice being the first image for the poster due to it having a focal point and more of a foreground and background, I asked Zatul if she could blur the background a little bit to create more of a focal point on the tea stand. Filter>Blur>Iris Blur. However, when we printed it out to scale I think it was a little bit too blurry and did not come across as hoped.

Evaluation as a group

What worked :

- We all spoke a lot and had good communication between us, via facebook and in person

- Each played a different role within the group, with different skills. Myself being good at making quick decisions and piecing everything together, Zatul the technical whiz on Photoshop and overall editing, Lauren making great ideas come to life in particular the den, and Abby being great at visually drawing out ideas (best poster!)

- I think we made a considerable amount of effort into making our concept work. Good use of time

- Getting the deliverables done on time 

- A clear link between what initially annoys us about society and our final outcome being a good positive message to send out 

What didn't work:

- Should have talked more face to face than on facebook because sometimes ideas don't come across as well 

- Too many ideas, everyone is so different at how they imagine things and want things to look. Sometimes having such vast skills is hard to bring together 

- Different timetables making it hard to meet up 

- All so different styles of illustrations was hard to make the posters all look like a series 

- Some people making more effort than others 

Evaluation - individual

How successfully do you feel the collaboration worked? and why?

I feel overall it could have gone better, but I was put with a group of really nice girls who were willing to put just as much time and effort in as I was. I think because we were all so different this was more difficult than helpful because we often disagreed on how we wanted something to look. I learnt a lot from Zatul in particular just the way that she works and how hard working she is; as well as technical skills. It was nice to be put with people that I have not worked with before to get to know them and how they approach a brief. Certain aspects we would all agree did not come out as well as we hoped and given more time we could edit this, sometimes I think having too many hands spoils things though and it takes for one person to just make a decision and stick with it. (Too many cooks spoil the broth) and maybe I would have rather just been paired with one person, that works completely different to the way I do in order to balance our techniques and combine them. It was a little bit too overwhelming and hard to pin down ideas. 

What specific visual skills did you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief?How did you use them? How did this benefit the project?

I think I was best at being the researcher, coming up with ideas, and dabbling a little bit in Photoshop to begin with to try visualise our concept. I created an A4 poster as did everyone, that matched the style of others which was difficult to be so collaberative and felt like a bit of a chameleon trying to match up with the rest when it was not particularly my way of working. I helped with the creation of the den and photographing this and between myself and Zatul we put together the final GIF, and edited photographs to decide on the last A2 poster. I also brought in materials as references from my niece such as a dolls head and princess tiaras, brushes.

What specific non-visual skills did you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How did you use them? How did this benefit the project?

Again just coming up with ideas, collecting a lot of research online, statistics and lists of games that we could possibly play around with. I think I maintained the playful concept by adding some humour. I was the decision maker in everything I feel when everyone had their ideas I decided which would work and which wouldn't in order to pin down all of the madness going on and create something successful - a director if you will. I managed our time arranging times and places to meet. 

What were your specific roles in the collaboration in relation to your brief? How well do you feel you fulfilled them?

We did not really have specific roles we often just worked out our ideas together but the things I feel I was most on hand with was initial research, researching old games to generate ideas, and the final making of the products i.e the poster and GIF. I think I played a significant role in working within the team because without me I think too much time would have been spent trying to make decisions and come up with ideas rather than the actual making. I was well aware of the time scale that we had and so brushed off a lot of ideas and came up with new ones; for example everyone making their own individual brief which everyone decided on until I explained how it would look and how long it would take to edit. 

What were your individual responsibilities in relation to your brief? How well do  you feel you fulfilled them?

My individual responsibility was to ensure that I constantly kept communicating with the rest of my group, sending them any research I found and any ideas generated. Collecting imagery to generate ideas, and collecting materials that would work inside the den for a children's tea party. I luckily have a 3 year old niece of whom I stole some of her toys and dolls - which she was not happy about! We used these to photograph. I kept on top of my blog as we went along which was important because of the wide range of ideas that we had developed. 

How do you think you benefited from collaborating with the others?

I think I benefitted seeing how other people approach a brief and the tools they use. In particular digitally with Zatul in the making of a GIF and using different fonts. I did not know I could download a font from online to save into Photoshop, so you learn something new everyday! I think being part of a team you bounce ideas off eachother and come up with great ones which is lovely we got really excited over the idea of the fake posters. I don't think the posters came off as well as we hoped but the ideas were really strong. 

What would you do differently when collaborating next time?

Take better photographs of the den, maybe all take our own photographs and pool them together. Make sure that the photographs flow when creating a GIF. Spend more time researching into other GIF's and the possibilities of text. I would ensure that everyone played a significant part rather than some people making more effort than others. Communicate better and make more of an effort to meet up than on Facebook. Change the final poster and do more testers of what it would look like at a larger scale. Maybe used a better camera? Spent more time on the posters idea - took them outside, got a reaction from people.