2.21.22
WEEK 7 PROGRESS
1. What were your goals for this week?
- Meet with Hannah (mentor 2/15). After meeting with Hannah determine what materials I want to use for the puffer coat (vinyl for arms and another fabric for the main part or vice versa).
- Make a list of philosophical questions without judgment. Areas and topics I want to ask about. Poetic. Will help build a story when describing the project in presentations.
- Test markers when attached to fabric (curved).
- Test markers when camouflaged with fabric (can it still be detected?).
- Work on design of 3d models and aesthetics of them (color choices).
- If I have time: sew together patchwork for overalls and trace patterns to keep this part moving.
2. What did you accomplish, please reflect on your time management. What worked or didn't?
I was able to do everything except for the last goal which was only if I had time. Instead, I went to the thrift store to find a few more fabrics to use since I know I'll need more than what I already have.
3. How did you integrate feedback?
After meeting with Hannah (see notes below), I was able to use this feedback when getting the fabrics for the overalls. I also redid the QR codes and markers so they had color coordination which was a suggestion I received during user testing. I also integrated Mary's feedback from class about reducing the polygons in my animations and this seemed to help! I changed colors in my water bottle animation which was also a suggestions because I was told multiple times that they looked like milk bottles.
4. What was unexpected / what lessons did you learn?
The first thing that I learned was that patterns do not work with markers. I thought making the border around my pattern thicker would help solve this issue, but it did not. After a little research, I found out that marker patterns need to be simple in order for them to be recognizable. Here's a helpful article I found on requirements for markers.
Meeting with Hannah May
Hannah is a member of my target audience. I had an interview with her on 2/15 to ask her about the material choices for my puffer coat, overalls, and accessories to see if she had any insights on what I could use. She frequently attends concerts and festivals, so she was the perfect person to reach out to.
For the puffer coat, she liked the idea of filling it with plastics I've collected. I expressed concern about not having any colors, so she recommended colored vinyl instead of clear vinyl and/or putting stick-on vinyl over the clear plastic vinyl I already have so it doesn't go unused. I really like the idea of putting vinyl over the plastic I already have because I already own vinyl and I can put it in specific places so parts are still see-through. When it came to using mesh, she advised against it because mesh isn't waterproof and the inside of the coat could get ruined. However, filling it with plastic mesh from old groceries could help with the lack of color.
When it came to the overalls, she sent a screenshot to her friend while we were talking, and her friend said she would definitely wear them. They both loved the patchwork idea but recommended I either use fabrics that are all crazy patterns or only a few so they don't distract from one another. Also, if the puffer coat is going to be colorful, if I want the overalls to match, it's important everything goes together.
Finally, when it came to the bioplastic earrings, she thought they looked really cool. Although I won't be doing this, she suggested it could be cool to reuse plastics to create them and then cover them with vinyl.
Here are a few links she sent me for inspiration:
Test with Patterned Markers
Here are a few videos of me testing the markers with a pattern on a pattern to see if they are recognizable. Unfortunately, this did not work. The first video is showing that the animation will show up. I used the ball to make it easy and so that it will load faster.
This video shows me testing with the marker I made to match a coat I had. I just changed the code so the pattern was the new marker. As you can see, the ball appears, but doesn't ever connect with the marker.
I decided to change the marker to a colored pattern to see if that would make a difference. I was still getting the same problem.
Finally, I decided to do one more test with the same houndstooth pattern but a thicker border. Like I mentioned above, this didn't work either.
Marker Sewed On Fabric
This final marker test was to see if the marker would still work when integrated with my fabric. I chose to test it on the back pocket of the overalls where they curve to see if the marker was still readable. As you can see it was, so I can integrate them into my final design sewn onto the clothing (or attached in a similar way).
List of Questions
I was able to come up with 30 questions related to my project:
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Why is sustainable clothing important?
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What does sustainable mean when it comes to clothing?
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How can this be specifically applied to festival fashion?
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What are the benefits of choosing sustainable clothing when fast fashion is more accessible?
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How can sustainable clothing be made more accessible?
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What role do materials play when it comes to sustainable clothing?
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How do you know if materials are sourced sustainably?
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What does it mean to source materials sustainably? Processes?
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How much of a difference does wearing sustainably made clothing actually make?
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Why should someone care about helping the environment through clothing when there are so many other ways they can help (less effort)?
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What role does clothing play in our everyday lives?
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When it comes to festival fashion, what are common elements seen throughout?
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Would someone who attends festivals care about sustainability?
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Do people that attend festivals understand the environmental damage they have?
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Follow up question: do these people do their part to clean up after themselves?
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What are festivals doing to implement more sustainable practices?
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What are realistic actions attendees can take to reduce their carbon footprint at festivals?
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How often do attendees buy new outfits and accessories for festivals?
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Which brands are they purchasing from and why?
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Why aren’t more brands implementing sustainable practices?
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For brands that do have sustainable practices in place, is it because the brand really cares or is it for PR?
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How transparent are they about their practices? The more details and photos the better.
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Why is transparency important?
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What are the most important qualities festival goers look for when it comes to clothing? Most important to least important? Color, material, function, form, durability, sustainability, etc.
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When looking at the ethics surrounding sustainable fashion, what practices and parts of the process are most to least important to consumers? A few that come to my mind are material sourcing, the materials themselves, where clothing is made, treatment of workers, how waste is handled, packaging and shipping materials, brand values and messages, cost of production, carbon footprint from material sourcing and shipping.
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Is it possible to make clothing that is truly sustainable?
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Is there a better term to describe clothing aside from sustainable?
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Has the word sustainable become overused and worn out?
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Does this cause it to lose value and drift from the original intention?
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Does this take away from brands that are actually following sustainable practices?
New Animations
The last thing I worked on was redoing my animations and orienting them the correct way so they wouldn't come at the camera as much. I also changed colors so they matched my aesthetic and applied Mary's advice for reducing the number of polygons so they would load much faster and this definitely helped.
Statistics I will be using to go with animations:
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EDM.com: “Major music festivals like Coachella (250,000 attendees over two weekends) generate an average 106 tons (212,000 lbs) of waste per day, which is greater than either the total weight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor plus its full payload, or a fully-loaded Boeing 757 and its 300 passengers. For context, the average American produces about one ton of trash per year.”
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BBC: "Festivalgoers discard wristbands, fancy dress clothing, glitter, ponchos, toiletries, sleeping bags, mats and tents all made from polymers that can persist in the environment for decades if not centuries.”
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The Conversation: “There is a popular belief that most tents left behind after festivals are collected and sold by charities or sent to good causes. But this is wishful thinking: most of it end up in landfill.”
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TeenVogue: “Single-use outfits for music festivals, such as Glastonbury and Coachella, alone, account for approximately $307 million worth of items per year, or about 7.5 million outfits worn only once." Also, "Censuswide found that, as a whole, 'one in four of those surveyed would feel embarrassed wearing an outfit to a special occasion more than once.' This outlook is proliferated by social media, where outfit re-posts are avoided to maintain a certain grid aesthetic."
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UN Environmental Program: ”The fashion industry produces 20 percent of global wastewater and 10 percent of global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping.” Also, “Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.”
See redone animations below. I ended up adding more objects made from plastic to the water bottle animation. For some of the objects, I followed tutorials, but for the most part, I just spent a lot of time sculpting until I liked how they looked. I animated them so it looked like they were being picked up by the wind and carried away. This is to show the environmental impact of music festivals. When trash is left behind, this is exactly what happens. Click here to test the final animation and use the water bottle marker from Week 6's post.
For the flowers, I wanted them all to rotate, and I also made the colors various shades of red instead of a bunch of rainbow colors. It took about 4 hours to render just the flower animation, but the file still loads quickly in A-Frame. Click here and use the flower marker from Week 6 to see the final animation.
Finally, for the fire, I wasn't able to get to it because I'm still working on the design and if I even want to do fire, but if I stick with it it will be a flat fire that rotates around in a circle. I'm also considering doing different clothing items being thrown into a landfill pile instead of the clothing being burned (getting user testing feedback on this).