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HI!HAMLET
year 1 term 1
autumn term
20th-26th September:Â
Everything was exciting for me as I arrived at my first university class in the UK, but I was still waiting for my plane flight and nucleic acid test results, very nervous and excited to pack my bags. Everything had to be packed, my passport, my favourite drawing kit, my notebook and I was very sorry that I didn't get to participate in the first week of introductory activities as I am a very easily nervous person and being prepared in advance might have made me feel more comfortable with university life.
27th September-3rd October:Â
I've arrived in England! Everything was very exciting. I've been at home this week because of the segregation policy and I've been doing online classes. It's hard to concentrate on online classes. I've started working on my wix website, but I haven't particularly understood the tutorials because of the language problem and the website needs work!
4th-10th October:Â
I ended up in isolation and was still at home for most of the week doing online classes, I missed the practical sewing class as a result, which was a shame as my sewing machine hadn't been delivered to the house so I wasn't able to follow along. This week we watched a documentary by Martin Scorsese, which was three hours long and slightly difficult for me to understand in English. I took notes on all the films mentioned in the documentary because I've always wanted to study film history systematically and I think these films will be very helpful to me!
11th-17th October:Â
For my first Skills Passport course, I studied photoshop and learned the basics, which I think is a necessary skill for a designer to have, so that's important! I got to work on my mood board. In the six week language course we've been studying Harvard reference, but it's hard so it needs more practice. This week I'm watching Medea, which I think is ok, but not as helpful as the documentary last week. I have finished the sewing work I had left off in sewing class with the help of my teacher, but I am still worried if I will be able to finish the shirts before the end of the project and time is running out!
18th-24th October:
​This week's skill passport is the character mood board, which I think is similar to the previous mood board. This week's movie is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and I'm loving it, it's funny! Although I'm really scared of horror films, this one was full of suspenseful thrillers that were new and fun to shoot. The background research was about the place we chose to study. I chose a building that I thought was interesting! But the shirt structure felt difficult to me and my handwork was not quite up to scratch. I drew my design, but I couldn't find a good opportunity for him to realise it on my shirt yet
25th-31st October:Â
Gary taught us how to create repeating patterns using photoshop, this I had learnt before so I also used Adobe Illustrator to make my patterns, I chose a guitar and a traditional Chinese instrument the pipa and a landscape pattern to make which was easy for me. We learnt about critical studies and the first thing that came to my mind then was the topic of adapting a novel! So I was going to make IP adaptations the subject of my dissertation. I love watching film and TV adaptations and it was because I wanted to make clothes for my favourite characters that I decided to study  costume design. It's so exciting! I spent a lot of time on shirt making, which was really tiring, but I got it done. I also loved the sewing craft I made, which was a little skirt.This week we had two viewing assignments because of our course schedule. We watched Metropolis first, but actually due to some technical problems that arose at the beginning, I looked up another Metropolis film, an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's manga of the same name published in 1949, which tells the story of robots and humans spending their years together in a futuristic metropolis, with conflicts arising from robots acting as labourers and putting humans out of work. I enjoyed the anime so much that I also caught up on watching Metropolis, both very similar stories.
1st-7th November:Â
I missed the safety awareness session in the woodworking workshop because I was ill. We had our first outing, which was to Newstead Abbey and saw lots of beautiful artefacts and historical relics. We were about to start our first group project! I was nervous as I hadn't made a British classmate since the start of the school year, which is probably social phobia. Christmas and the Nutcracker really made it feel very festive. Christmas! What a cheerful word! After our research we had a group call and were assigned character designs. We decided to follow our favourite Nutcracker character, so I chose the Sugar Plum Fairy and I wanted to create a scene where she is setting up a wagon to give sweets to everyone, I still have some serious research to do.This week's viewing assignment is Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, I don't think the adaptation is as good as the original, looking forward to if we will have a Shakespeare design project
8th-14th November:Â
This week was spent dyeing fabric, I have tried dyeing fabric with grass and wood dyes before but with some traditional grass and wood plant pigments from my country, different to the ones we use on the course.I actually watch all of my weekly viewing items online because I need subtitles to aid my viewing. But this week it's a film by the painter Dali and a surrealist style of photography that I really like! So I went to the theatre to watch it with my fellow theatre design students. Really enjoyed it!For this week's design project we got together and discussed many, many ideas and style designs, we wanted to have our own style as well as making our five boxes look like one. In the end we agreed to use the gift box packaging for the children to unify the style, I really like the design and I hope it all works out!
15th-21st November:
​The woodworking classroom is so exciting! My grandfather was a carpenter, so the woodworking workshop felt very close to me and reminded me of my childhood dreams filled with wood chips and the smell of cut wood. There were lots and lots of very new machines in the workshop, not unlike my grandfather's hand tools, but it still stirred up a lot of excitement for me. I made boxes and designed storage spaces for myself. The design project is still in progress and I got the box model done, but I found my box design a little too big. This week's viewing of Zero de Conduite is also a surrealist film, also about violence in schools, which is very immersive, which makes me sad.
22nd-28th November:
​Using clay to make masks was great fun and the equivalent of making our own face. The design process was really rushed and I think the bone masks I made should have been made using more appropriate materials, so I think I still need to base my designs on the materials when I am designing. This week I took part in a painting course and the combination of body painting and light and shadow was so beautiful. The model is a very fleshy sister and I love her! She was perfect for being painted. I also went to the theatre this week to see Scarlett Empress, the Queen was beautiful but I felt the film plot was not designed to be full. Everyone in the design project has bought their materials and is working on it ......
29th November-5th December:
Mask in progress, hopefully it will be finished before the holidays. But I think I've gone wrong with my Christmas box design ...... The idea was good, but because of poor discussion and poor anticipation of my own abilities, the design idea wasn't implemented perfectly! But revising it now is not a good idea, I should take responsibility for my design and not always stop half way because it is not perfect.
6th-10th December:
​Finally finished the Christmas box! A big thank you to my group members for their help and understanding, I hope they don't think I am not willing to communicate because of the communication difficulties, in fact I would really like to have friends of different nationalities, cultures and ages. The final presentation of our group Christmas box was actually quite good. The design project this week was very intense and there was actually a lot that I didn't design in order to complete the task, I should have refined my calendar more. The mask was not completed in class and I will be finishing my bone mask during the holidays. Before I left school I borrowed the book costume101 from the library and I gave myself a reading assignment for the holidays.
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