WEEK 5: Evaluation

My Zine was inspired by the by my year so far living in London. i think when I moved here I ended up realising how big of a deal it actually was moving to a whole other country, leaving your family behind, stepping out of your place of comfort. My zine also has themes of struggles I had growing up. For example my Binge eating disorder, extreme body dysmorphia, always feeling like I missed out on “being young” because I felt pressured being mature when I was still (and am) just a kid. I think that’s also partly the reason why my editorials portray feminine bodies because I never liked how my body looked. I developed curves at a young age and I did everything to try and hide it because I was constantly sexualised for it.

When it came to developing work I first started scouting for models and Makeup artists to collaborate with. I thought making this Zine would be a great opportunity to meet new people who have some more experience than me and just meet more people who also want to pursue something in the Fashion industry. I made announcements on my editorial account on Instagram and went on @UALcreatives to let everyone know that i’m looking for Models and MUA’S who want to collaborate for a shoot and had many girls respond back. Initially it was quite a lot of girls not gonna lie so I just picked models who i thought would fit the themes of my editorials.

With this project the only thing I would have changed would be to perhaps not try to make an overwhelming amount of work. My initial plan for this Zine was to do 14 planned shoots. I ended up doing 9. And out of those 9 only 5 actually ended up making it in the Zine. I think it would have been better had I just had 5 planned shoots and some development work because as fun as it was doing these shoots it does get extremely draining and it takes your time from doing other parts of the this project such as the PR.

My portfolio definitely shows my future direction especially the work I produced in term 3. I really tried to show “Styling and Production” in these editorials by primarily focusing on the garments, choosing interesting location (for example: Restaurant toilet) or making my own sets in my kitchen since I didn’t have the budget of booking a set here.

I think so far the best feedback I received was from Carlyn when she checked Myblogs. It was really helpful with how detailed she was with what I needed to do in order to pass this part of the course. She went into detail with what I need to add more off and in all very honest about the initial stages of my blog.

Overall the project was really fun. Partly because of the creative freedom we had. I genuinely wanted to create work this term that I liked instead of just making something for the sake of submission (which is what I felt like I was doing in the last two terms). I have met so many amazing people and I couldn’t be happier with the shoots I have done so far and can’t wait to do more in the future.

I think my strength is that when I find my drive for things i’m passionate about I do everything I can to produce the best work. But i suppose that’s also my weakness, when I feel drained I stop working completely since I get so unmotivated or I just make the bare minimum work which doesn’t really show my full potential. Overall I learnt that I can’t stop. When I stop making work I loose that drive and go into a dark place again. Making editorials is something I genuinely love doing and I need to keep making them regardless of it being college work or not so I don’t fallback and lose my motivation.