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HYPERCRAFT REFLECTION

Because I spend a lot of time over the past few years on Hypercraft, I have had a good amount of time to reflect on what the digital world means to me. I mostly see myself as a textile developer and physical designer, the digital world has felt foreign to me for a long time. 

The last few months I have committed myself fully to Hypercraft. I wanted to use Blender to create an environment because this adds a lot of depth to the project in my opinion. This was a really tough because I did not have any previous experience with this program. I thought myself the basics by using the internet and my intuition. The final environment I am quite proud of because it accurately reflects the ambience I was aiming for. I also did not have an avatar before so I also really wanted to create one, this made gives the garments more personality and an actual context. This was quite challenging to get right because the avatar has different proportions then a human body. I made it work and feel like this adds to the charisma of the overall project.

Although I am proud of the final results, I am unsure if I will use the tools in this way in the future. CLO is the tool I will probably use the most because it works well for toiling and getting a general idea of what the garments will look like. I did learn a lot, which makes me appreciate everything that digital designers do even more. 

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GARMENT #4

This is the final outfit I made of the wooden art mannequin. I like the way it turned out. It’s interesting to see how the proportions got bulkier and heavier looking because I scaled the patterns down to a mannequin that is 30CM in height. It is look 2 of the digital outfits I made. Which in the renders has a more human silhouet, were this has a more doll like proportions.

All the edges are finished with a blanket stitch. This gives the whole outfit a more realistic garment feeling. Each seam is stitched by hand. The contrast between the digital outfits that are completely done in the virtual world and the physical outfit that is completely created by hand is really interesting.

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GARMENT #3

Here are the felt trousers on the mannequin. The jacket is mostly done but still needs a bit of finishing. This currently is still the rough shape. Once I fully finish the outfit I will make a new post

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LOOK 3

This is the third and final outfit I made digitally. I am happy with the results. Adding the environment I made in Blender added a lot more depth to the project. I feel like it gave me a new appreciation for the possibilities in the digital world.

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LOOK 2

These are the final renders of look 2. I think it also turned out really well and put’s a nice focus on the details and highlights the fabrics.

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LOOK 1

These are the final renders of look 1. I used a wide view for the renders to put an emphasize on the surroundings because this adds to the overall feel of the project really well. I am quite happy with how they turned out and the aesthetic they convey. They poses I spoke about earlier in my post about them. But I think they tie in really well with the look and scale of what I created.

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LINE-UP

These are the six looks that make up the line-up for my collection. All of the looks are based on the concept and my research. I used the two mono fabrics I developed for this project. I created look 1, 5 and 6 in CLO. Look 5 I made into a physical 1/4 scale outfit.

I used the cachou dye that I used to stain the physical mannequin, to paint the mannequin. I wanted the line-up to be readable and crafty.

Look 1

Look 2

Look 3

Look 4

Look 5

Look 6

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POSES #2

The poses I previously made a pose about heavily inspired Iggy Pop and David Bowie for the cover photo’s for some of their most popular records. I like this pastiche because it takes the essence of Egon’s paintings but puts it into a more modern context

This pose I created is based on the album cover for Iggy Pop’s record ‘’The Idiot” which can be seen above.

This pose is based on the album cover for David Bowie’s album “Heroes”. I think it suits the project and avatars well. It also adds a more human look to the avatars.

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RESIT REFLECTION

These are the missing requirements I got for my feedback last time. My grade was a 5.0.

Last time I had two outfits which was insufficient. I now added a third outfit which rounds out the collection better. All outfits have an interesting usage of the developed material. This was also the main focus of the project.

I experimented with prints which is visible in my process book. The prints did not suit my project though. Mainly because my focus was on felt development. And the prints did not translate well to the felt material. The target audience I will further elaborate on in a future post in my process book.

Lack of usage of the digital tools has been hugely improved on. I only had four garments during my previous final presentation. I added a new outfit, a custom made avatar and created an environment in Blender. The fabric I used was created by hand and scanned using Vizoo. This gives it more depth and gives an overall lively look to the material. 

I feel like I sufficiently improved on the lack of depth I had in my project last time around. 

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POSES #1

The poses the avatars will have are based on the fragile, contorted position the Austrian painter Egon Schiele often portraited. These position give off a sense of fragility and longing for salvation. These themes are also apparent in my concept and project.

In these painting there is a strong emphasize on arms and hands. Most have an awkward looking position and pose. They seam to long for safety and warmth. This is similar to the feelings I felt while making this collection during COVID. Since art mannequins usually have a a similar awkward stiffness to their poses, I feel like this suits them well.

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GARMENT #2

I continue with the trousers in this post. All the edges will be finished by a hand done blanket stitch. This blanket stitch is also used in the digital versions of the garments. Here you can see that it makes the edges get thinner and more textured.

I finished the front pockets with the same stitch. You can already see that the garment has doll-like proportions. Which is what I was aiming for.

The back pockets are also finished with the stitch. Then I attached them by hand with a simple stitch.

This is the first leg finished on the mannequin. It fits wide and stiff, which was wat I was aiming for. In general I am happy with what the toile looks like thus far.

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GARMENT #1

Like I mentioned earlier, I am going to sew the garments on a small scale. It is scaled down to the size of a wooden art mannequin. This mannequin is 30cm in height so the garments will be scaled accordingly. I think this will be a fun juxtaposition with the full scale garments I created digitally. Since the construction will be the same but the proportions will differ dramatically.

I am going to sew the garments from look 2. This is the pattern placement on a piece of felt. 

The mannequin was a light wood. Since the one I used in the renders and final presentation is much darker I stained it with cachou, which is a brown natural dye. This gives the mannequin a more rustic appearance. 

This is the finished mannequin and the pattern pieces cutout.

Everything will be completely sewn by hand. This adds to the crafty nature of the physical ‘garment’, this is ofcourse juxtaposed by the digitally crafted garments

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AVATAR #3

The garments I designed were a challenge to fit on the art mannequin avatar. Since they were initially fitted on a human avatar I had to adjust them accordingly. At first I added a wood texture to the mannequin to make it appear more realistic. 

Here the woodgrain is visible. Especially in the render window it is apparent that the texture looks a lot more realistic.

Because the wood mannequin has a lot of geometric shapes, the drape of the garments will inevitably be less fluid. This adds to the overall look of them in my opinion because this seems to add a more scaled down look. This further creates the juxtaposed proportions I am aiming for in the final results.

As you can see in the fit above. The blazer does not fit well on the mannequin. Because of the bulk, geometric shape of the avatar it gets contorted in a way that does not suit the garment. I am going to adjust the garment accordingly to get a more desirable fit. The shorts fit decently but seem to warp a bit.

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AVATAR #2

Since the last avatar developments were a bit rough. Decided to rig the avatar in mixamo. Mixamo is a program to rig OBJ and other non movable objects. 

I found multiple different wooden art mannequin OBJs but most were not rigable or not suitable to the aesthetic of my project.

This one was attached to it’s base making it harder to use in clo. And also made it not rigable. 

This shape is pretty good but proved nearly impossible to rig because of the shape the OBJ was positioned in.

Although this model looks quite interesting it does not suit the aesthetic of my project. It looks to futuristic and video game like. 

This is the model I ended up using in Mixamo. Aesthetically it fits well with what i wanted.

The model I ended up using is very similar to what I had in mind. The rigging was quite easy and made the model similar to a CLO3D avatar.

This is the avatar in CLO3D after rigging it. It appeared with two polygons missing on the head but I think it looks quite charming this way. Since it adds a certain ‘human’ element to the avatar

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ENVIRONMENT #3

I changed the background to a plastered wall. This corresponds with the walls I had in my apartment. It also adds extra texture to the setting. Because the wall was incorrectly tiled I could not get the wall PNG to fit as seen below.

Here I tried to get the wall texture to fit but it just stretched a lot. I will try to resolve this by separating the tiles in to multiple ones to get a more even texture.

This is the plastered wall texture after retiling the wall panels and tweaking the lighting.

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ENVIRONMENT #2

This is the setting I created for my project. Most objects are premade objects I curated to create a ‘universal’ desk. I took elements that are both present on my desk during this project, and items that are more broadly associated with a home desk of a creative process. 

Here is a more up close of the setting. The objects that are pink are currently missing textures. I will have to find these textures to have the objects in a render. Since I am quite a novice in Blender this is still something I am currently figuring out.

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ENVIRONMENT #1

The environment I want to create for my project will be an impression of my desk. Because I use a wooden art mannequin as my avatar I feel like it will suit the setting quite well. During corona I was bound to my own small room. My desk being the only thing that created a creative space for me to express myself. It also plays with the scale of the garments because they are designed on a full scale but implemented in a ‘scaled down’ setting. I will try to create this environment in Blender. Mainly because it is a fairly accessible tool to create and sculpt 3D environments and objects.