strange but true

Afternoon ice cream break and a browse of asos..am attracted by these bizarrely ugly but fascinating blowfish wedges/mules..cannot work out if I love or hate..

back to reality, almost

After my first beautiful saturday off and a mini one-day holiday down at hackney lido yesterday (!) I'm back to finalising all the little extras I'd like to have at the show. One of the key areas with this project has been finding easy and effective ways to communicate what is a non-conventional construction for footwear. I have the animation, which I'm turning into a business card sized flickbook at the moment, and what I also wanted to work on was an augmented reality business card. I met up with David Sweeney who freelances with the LCF Fashion Digital Studio last friday, and hope to be able to create something along these lines in time for the show. This would essentially be an augmented reality model of my pin bed and maybe wedge, which you can see when you hold up my business card/flickbook to a webcam. You then see the 3D model of the shoe on screen with yourself...how cool! Something like this...


David also worked on the first augmented reality fashion presentation with cassette playa last fw10/11 (where a symbol on the t-shirt of the models triggers an animation which plays on top of the model)..

CASSETTE PLAYA AW1011 - AUGMENTED REALITY from Amazing Grace on Vimeo.

The Original

Copyright Helen Furber 2010

Showtime

So over the moon with these images. Thanks to David Abrahams (Photographer) and Natalie Fisher (Stylist). I will be making a digital and print lookbook asap.

All images Copyright Helen Furber 2010

Spraymount Neutral

So the weekend was absolutely mad and it's taken me until now to recover from 3 days of zero sleep and a month of 18 hour days. I didn't finish everything the way I wanted to in time for the uni deadline which was a massive disappointment but the shoes were ready which is what counts - not bad in just over a month! Just organising all of the bits and pieces - there's always some extra little thing to be done, like embossing business card samples, box-making etc. In the end, the majority was done and as the boyf pointed out, it's a good job the rest of the project is "sustainable" to offset spraymount emissions that were leaching from my flat! Onwards to finalising animation, lookbook printing and website..

Making a sample shoe box

shoot deux

So as well as an editorial style shoot I also wanted some images of the products which really showcase them in their own right. Working with David Abrahams and Natalie Fisher again we put heads together and following my brief of "nature meets technology", deciding the theme of the shoot should be based around natural textures which also look luxury/futuristic. I got on t'internet and ordered a whole load of bits: first off black gravel - I'd been dying to use this is some way or another and finally had a chance! Then also white wool tops - the excess from the spinning process which themselves are also really beautiful. I loved the idea of using a waste natural product in the shoot - in the end it was 100g of natural fibre Ramie Tops. Natalie also came up with the idea of eggs and charcoal which gave us an even balance of colours and textures for the background shots. After a trip to tesco and dalston market, my livingroom was again crammed full of camera stuff and trays of these bits...

And I will be baking for several months.

shoot (me)

Yesterday was a pretty frought affair. After a meeting to finalise the animation for my product we had scheduled to have my editorial shoot at 7 in the evening but at midday the third confirmed model cancelled on me. So at 6.30 after an unsuccessful non-finish of the animation (going back today...) I headed off to topshop oxford circus in search of the face of my campaign. God bless topshop in all it's glory for there in the queue with a huge mass of bags and looking all pretty was mary, a norwegian 15year old on holiday, who after an initial moment of confusion agreed to come along (grandma in tow) and take part. 5 hours later following some precarious perching on a black glass box (made by my flatmate's own fair hand) and lots of yawning we had our shoot. And the rest as they say is history..Get the photos back today. The shoes fit her like a glove..I'm excited!

Uber Mega thanks to Natalie (my flatmate) and David (her boyf) who were stylist and photographer for my shoot.

POP

bubbles: I wage war on thee

Until this project I found bubbles rather attractive. Now starting the last week before hand in for my ENTIRE degree, and we still have not managed to cast my wedge and shoe grips despite having a vacuum machine, And all because of bubbles. I am slowly developing a newfound hatred..

lust

Beau Coops "plateau boot". Damn you for selling out I can actually afford you

animation station

So have been madly trying to cast my wedges over the past week as well as try and pull together all of the presentation material. Today has been really exciting as I worked with the LCF digital studio and created an animation of my shoe construction from the CAD models. I can't believe how fast it was done and looks great! Just needs to finish rendering and then title sequence will be added in. In the meantime I was doing lots of animation/technical video research and have decided dyson is a really great example of how video is used to explain product innovation to consumers. So much information is packed into 21seconds of film..I'm convinced.