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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.

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.

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.

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.

shoot day

Finishing touches

Hands/Arms

I bought a set of stiletto fake nail from primark and painted them white, when they where glued to my model i would sponge over them with white body paint streaking it up the arm over the chest and covering the face and hair.

Staff

for the staff I used an old metal curtain pole, paper mached over it and painted that white to create a more wood like effect and then layered wrapped ribbon around a section to create a grip for Lucas to hold on to with two stands of ribbon hanging down. i also plugged the bottom of the pole to make sure it wouldn't slip when used. i decided to add a staff to the costume because i was blindfolding Lucas and putting him on stilts and i felt it necessary to give him something to help stabilise him.

Belt

The only part of the costume that i didn't create were the legging and i didn't want the waist band of the leggings to cheapen the look of the rest of the costume so to hid it i decided i had to create a belt. i started out with a triangular piece of calico and stitched bandages over it which looked stupidly thrown together so i tried layering lace over it, i still didn't like it so i ended up cutting it into a rectangle which looked a lot better i then stitched a piece of ribbon to ether side so that it could be fasten in the back using a simple bow

what i forgot about at this point was that i was making it to fit Lucas and not myself so when i tied the ribbons on him it didn't fit so i had to tuck it into the back of the legging to have it stay.

the stilts in action

Finished Stilts

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

Eval 5

21/05-27/05

This week’s plan was to start the stilts and the armour.

For the second attempt I decided I needed to go for a simpler approach to ensure these worked I didn’t what to have to scrap the whole idea because It was important for my idea to be executed the way I imagined.

To do this I went for a design that at its core only needed a pair of boots with the heels cut of, a wooden block to screw the toe of the boots to, and some pvc pipe to ensure stability.

I removed the heel from the boot (which took a lot longer then I thought it would) cut down the side and the front of the toe so that I could screw the toe of the shoe toe the wood block that would make it the stilt then added gorilla glue to make sure the screws wouldn’t wiggle there way out of the wood and make them less structurally sound. Finally measuring a length of pvc pipe heating it up using a heat gun and bending it to the angle of the shoe to add some support to the heal of the boot.

I intended to attach the pipe to the wood using pipe clips but both types I bought didn’t fit correctly so I had to resort to simply drilling through the pipe as fixing it to the wood using screws which after feeling how sturdy it has come out I think probably works better then the clips would have.

Then it was the armour made from worbla a thermal plastic that you can mould to any shape when you heat it using a heat gun. I cut the worbla to size using a template for the shin plate and the boot cover and layered it over craft foam to then mould around my leg and the boot that it would be covering. When both sections where done I used my left over worbla to mould into the rims of the shin covers and then painted them with a silver metallic finish.

The prosses only took me about 6 hours to complete though I wish I would have been able to play around with the material and test it ore so that I would have known better what I was doing then just relying on youtube tutorials. I was unable to do this because the one sheet of worbla I bought was only just enough to create what I needed and that cost me £30 and I didn’t have any more money to spare.

Next week is a holiday week and I plan to finish the stilts and the other finishing touches needed for the costume.

MothMeister

Mothmeister are a pair of anonymous artists and taxidermy enthusiasts, who describe themselves as, "passionate taxidermy collectors who portray anonymous, ugly masked creatures as a reaction against the dominant exhibitionism of the selfie culture and beauty standards marketed by the mass media."

Mothmeister have accrued nearly 160k followers on Instagram by focusing on the dark extreme. Their macabre photos suggest a brutal world full of monstrous people traveling to haunting locales.

Mothmeisters weird and wonderful mixture of animals and humans to create something never before seen reminds me of what i myself am envisioning and has got me thinking about where i want to photograph my perfect character, i love the idea of placing them in a area that looks like it doesn't belong on our earth to help hammer in the idea of perfection being nothing more then a delusion.

https://www.instagram.com/mothmeister/?hl=en

Eval 4

14/05-20/05

This week I dedicated to finishing everything above the waist. Finishing the torso and designing and creating the mask

At the beginning of the week the bags of feathers I had ordered for this project arrived and I decided to add some to the shoulder pads to create a more angelic feel. I glued a feather to every strand hanging from the shoulder pad and some sticking up and out of the shoulder pad its self so that when its on the model it gives the illusion of folded in wings. For this I had to use hot glue to attach them to both the strands and the shoulder pads but with strategic placement of the feathers and some pearls added for good measure I was able to hide the glue within the costume to ensure that it didn’t look messy.

Next, I moved on to designing and creating the mask. I knew I wanted to either cover the mouth or cover the eyes, covering the mouth would create a muzzled look like what you would see on a violent animal there for giving the impression that the monster is dangerous. It also leaves the eyes visible so that my model, who is also an actor, would be able to convey different emotions through expression. But these emotions would make it easy to sympathise with the character and make him appear more human which is something I really don’t want and by covering the eyes I was able to eliminate that. I created a make that blindfolded the wearer add horns to it, then had to cut it down the middle and make it bigger because I didn’t make it big enough to fit my models face. I added a wire base, so the feathers would stand in a halo like form around the head and the glue used to attach the feathers was hidden using pearls.

The mask was probably the simplest part of the costume to make and I was able to make it within the time I had set for it, I should have thought about the mask fitting my model at an earlier stage but it was a simple fix that took less the an hour to complete. Next week I’m going to create the stilts and the armour.

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.

Shoulder pads

for the shoulder pads i started by creating a paper base from 3 ‘scale’ shaped cut outs pined to a dress makers dummy and fanned out. Next layering paper mache on both shoulder pads and painting them white to create the actual base shoulder pads to layer decorations on to.

I then stapled a length of ribbon to each side of each shoulder pad in order to be able to attach the shoulder pad to the model by tying the two lengths of ribbon together under the opposite arm. i then draped lace around the shoulder pads and cutting the excess into strips to create that feathered look and glue on more strips of lace and ripped chiffon.

I then hot glued feathers to each individual strip of fabric from the shoulder pad and gluing some standing from the top of the shoulder pads and using pearls to hide the glue used to attach the feathers to create a more extravagant look.

I’m actually so proud of this so far and I hope to keep feeling this way about the rest of the project creation period

Neck Piece

In order to create the torso for the costume i went out into charity shops to collect materials.

I settled on 2 lace tops i had found in order to create this part of the costume the first had a lace piece that sat on the chest and fastened at the back of the neck, this worked perfectly for my vision for this part of the garment and saved me a lot of work.

I removed it from the rest of the top simply by undoing the stitching and then putting the lace on a dress makers dummy.

Then i cut up the other lace top into the individual lace flowers in order to attach them to the base lace structure to create a custom piece.

I tried a few different placements for the lace flowers and settled for a symmetric design concentrating most of the flowers round the outside of the base piece.

I planned on sewing the lace pieces onto the base but this didn’t work to well because the lace pieces went to structurally sound so instead i used a drop of super glue on the lace to attach them which worked surprisingly well and ment i could move on to the shoulder pads

Eval 3

07/05-13/05

This week I had planned to create the legs I had designed but because the materials I had ordered so that I could create them hadn’t arrived I had to put this off to a later date so instead I moved forward the creation of the torso.

At the beginning of the week I started designing the torso of the costume. I drew out 4 base male torsos to design on top of. All four of these designs used different materials but the two I liked best where the first two I drew up the first of which being a shawl-esque garment made of stitched together pieces of miss matched lace starting at the neck and falling over the shoulders and down the chest. The second is a set of shoulder pads with a chain connecting the two across the front of the chest. from the shoulder pads are scraps of different white fabrics like lace, calico and chiffon and fabric/wire curving up from the shoulder. And because I liked both designs I decided to create a final design that was a mixture of the elements I liked from both original designs, the lace shawl but stopping it at the middle of the of the space between the neck and shoulder to leave space for the shoulder pads covered in lace and having lace and ribbon flowing down from them.

I needed lace to create the torso design, so I went into local charity shops on a hunt for lace to use I did find it but it took me about two hours and six charity shops but I did find what I needed, two lace tops and one top with a lace neck that worked for the shawl part and that I cut off the top and attached more lace too in order to achieve the look I was going for and I got some old lace curtains that I draped over a paper mached base to create the wing like arms attaching them to the body using lace pulled across the chest and tied under the opposite arm. At this point I still need to add pearls to the top of the shoulder pads to add some texture to the top of them because as of right now they are looking a little boring. I’m also thinking of adding some feathers to them for a more wing like and angelic look nut ill cross that bridge when the feathers I ordered arrive.

What Is Perfection?

In order to have a better idea of perfection i asked a bunch of different creative people what came to there minds when i asked them about perfection. here is what they said.

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