Queen

This is the discipline that combines everything I know and love: theatre, costume, shape, colour, photography, design, model making, illustration, character.

It's thinking on paper and making with my hands.

It's creating something tactile and real for other people to see and believe it too.

It's creature design & fabrication.

This task gave me such a free reign of media and process, so I wanted to do what I've been so enamored with for years. I wanted to become part of the fantasy world I encapsulate myself within and I tried to use some of the techniques I've seen on Face Off and Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

This task was a lot of work and I didn't do half of the things I would have liked to... I want to learn more about animatronics and have a go at making the mechanical elements of motion, I'd also love to work with latex and foam to make molds and casts. Although I didn't do everything I would have liked to, I still achieved a lot in this week and did it all from home. I put in so many more hours than I have for any previous visual language task and that's because I had so much fun doing it.

I wasn't recreating things and doing second photoshoots because I felt I had to 'experiment', but because I wanted to see if I could do it better. I was interested as to how I could improve this costume even more.

The reaction from my peers really made the task worthwhile. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping that my peers would be able to read the theme of magic that I intended.

There was no time for comments, but I'm quite glad that people only got to see a fleeting image of this. It made it even more curious and fascinating because they didn't have the chance to ask questions or break the spell.

The reaction was an exhale of breath. No 'WICKEDD!' or 'COOL!', but a unified gasp. It didn't make them laugh and they weren't left with any questions, but it made most of the room 'oooh'.

Or so I like to think. Maybe it was just everyone yawning at the same time.

It made me feel really satisfied with the end product and I think my costume was successful in conforming to the fantasy genre.

I really liked Molly's worms! She used Plasticine and molded weird little wriggly worms. They were so realistic and I can't get the image of them out of my head.

Amazing how much difference the quality of a photo makes. Try and consider composition and lighting because it can change the entire read of the image.