An afternoon Visit at Polytechnic University-Fashion and Textile Discipline Fashion students show the preface of getting into the glamorous fashion industry, and reveal the hardships behind the look of beauty.
2011-05-21

Fashion is glamorous, but the people who are ready to involve in this glamorous industry proclaimed once again “Besides those luxurious and chic looks patrolling in fashion shows, and before those stunning pieces displayed on mannequins in retails stores come out, fashion is all about practical experiments and hard work.”

On this Saturday, I pay a visit to Polytechnic University responding their consultation day for Jupas applicants. Raining heavily, but my desire to understand the subject was still not .Gathered with almost all young fashion lovers in Hong Kong at the venue MN underground hall, where an accessories exhibition is hold, in which lecturers are answering student’s worries about the admission’s requirements and preparation of the interview. And  fashion students who look fresh and chic are eager to share their experience in their disciplines , talking like an insider of fashion.

And they explained: Spending three years on study a bachelor of Fashion and Textile Studies in three streams, including Fashion and Design, Fashion Business and Textile Technology, we are required to develop in-depth understand about the full spectrum of fashion, from knitting fibres into a fabric, tailoring with a mannequin to construct a gown, to managing the production lines of fashion and merchandising techniques... The ultimate goal of this subject is to educate fashion-passionate young talents into well-rounded and versatile master of the industry, rather than just illustrating drawings and tailoring.

When we visit the studio where they work skillfully with their scissors and mannequins, and there are few of them working on their ready-to-be-judged works, a girl is cutting a funny face off a fabric, the others are sewing their complicated patterned gown, and a students is wondering how the patterns be look like. A year-2 student, Alfred expressed “Though the progress is harsh, competitive and sometimes mundane, I still enjoy it, as I experienced the power of fashion long before I came here, and it still motivates me to go for it."

A hundred times harder than what we watch in Project Runway, fashion students, in order to gain credits in certain design specialists, they are accustomed to tailor in the laboratory overnight and co-operate with hard-to-deal-with partners on some critical examinations. “It is frustrated when the work doesn’t come out as what you had expected, which is just like fashion insiders always feel. It would be better if you get used to it, I believe, and start it all over again. It is scary. But, that’s the only way.” told the chic student in black. Though being innovative is the key to success in this field, but to create an avant-garde is not enough. The creation of student is expected to meet certain standards, for example, the innovativeness of the design, the technique applied, market value and whether it can present the philosophy of students themselves-in short, whether it got the sound and presented well.

“Though the progress is harsh, competitive and sometimes mundane, I still enjoy it, as I experienced the power of fashion long before I came here, and it still motivates me to go for it. “

“So many students came with a misconception that fashion is always glamorous and about drawing beautiful silhouettes and tailoring. And they all finally scared off when they dealt with the hardships, like inventing a new form of fibre with chemistry and mathematics needed to apply.” recalled by a lecturer. And he mentioned that something minors are usually ignored by students, like the production of certain raw materials and transit time of fabrics. Marvellous piece is constructed by many structures which turns a gown into a master piece with  exquisite details. And this kind of making process require a lot of collaborative work, experiments with different combination of materials and colours and patience. And, before getting started, many have to wait for the inspiration comes out and catch it.

Even though a garment is made, this doesn’t mean the process is finished. Students, like today independent designers, have to manage the supply chain and transition of time of material in order to master the skill of fashion manufacturing. And we visit the conceptual shop, called the Future Retails Store, in which a lookingglass with digital function to show what costumers would like is installed.

Students who choose Fashion Business stream, after finishing fundamental studies in year one, need to learn to manage a production line, and retails management related subjects in Fashion Business Stream to possess knowledge to produce and sell. “Timing is crucial.” a lecturer expressed, “You see two seasons in fashion, added with resorts and cruise collections, and mass-production companies like Zara and H&M even have to supply various new designs between seasons to encourage consumption, so you have to ensure the garments are made punctually and ready be put on racks. And that is how they can survive.” Fashion students are prepared to manage all these, studying the supply chains and comparing raw material prices, how to maintain efficient production lines and keeps wide personnel net-work in the industry, to learn to survive in a world that one day they are in, and the next day out.

When garments are made, they should be sold in a season, as the trends change, the stock is designated be sold in half price, which means a loss. However, merchandising strike to avoid this and make shopping into a wonderful experience to encourage target customers to spend.

Fashion students should be able to foresee changes in trends and consumers’ preferences.

“It sounds quite interesting that the way we prepare for this stream when compare it with others subjects. When other students buried their heads in books and papers, we are obligated to enjoy the fun of shopping as a form to study consumers’ behaviours and windows designs.” This can develop an insight in fashion. Having an insight in the up-coming trends is a strength that fashion students should be able to foresee changes in trends and consumers’ preferences. “This would be a disaster when the buyers purchase a gull collection, and this would cause more than a 5% loss of the retails company.” So that is why fashion-senses are needed. “The best way to be an up-to-date is to involve in the rapid changing trends. So why not shopping and throwing out the books and fabrics?”

No matter which streams students take, a numerous of projects which push them to analysis current trends, changes in costumers’ tastes and garments’ traits will be featured in the study. Being insightful and far-sighted does enable students to deal with future work tasks in all fashion careers. As a buyer, you need to conduct good evaluation about consumers’ tastes and preferences as a profession to ensure good sales; as a fashion editor, to discover new talents and provoke new trends like instincts is a must; not to mention as a creative director, always design according to what people like and need. And this is a recipe to innovate ground-breaking designs and to discover new looks and silhouettes.

When mentioned shopping, it is difficult to avoid discussing the phenomena of the road of High-end boutiques, praised as a road in which the total profit made on the street is enough to support the stores in different parts of the world-Canton Road. “It is not a weir experience that you met our students and their work at Canton Road and Chun Wan”, a lecture of the department joked wittily. “Our students have remarkable career prospects. They are sure to involve in the industry as a designer, marketing executives, fashion editors, textile designers, and production-line manager or start their studios. So it is common that you recognise their work and faces in the street of luxury goods” Besides, bachelor students can also receive further studies as a master in Fashion and Textile. And most importantly, they can do what they cling to.”▋



Pixar 25 Years of Animation

Offer us a chance to look at the birth of our old friends- Pixar’s Characters

The names Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear, Shelly and Boo, and Mr. and Mrs. Incredibles, may sound as familiar as the old friends of ours. But, we may also realize that they are the names of lively characters of those animations (ToyStory, Monster Inc., and the Incredibles) of Pixar, which seem still to accompany us with all joyful stories happened in cinema.

And, now, we all have the chance to have a glimpse at the birth of our old friends, as Pixar celebrated its 25 anniversary and hold an exhibition-25 years on Animation, in California. After that, it exhibits at Hong Kong, started from the March to July of 2011 at Hong Kong Heritage Museum, as the debut point of the world tour. In this time, more than four hundreds of sketches, models, and scripts are featured to offer public a raw vision of the birth of the characters and how pure imaginations of Pixar are brought into lives.

Pixar’s production represents a new age of digital animation. At the hall entrance, visitors are welcomed by so-real Shelly and Mike; going up on the escalator, we can see there are colourful banners with familiar characters’ faces painted hang on from the middle of the 12-metre high ceiling, giving audience of all ages a massage that it is time to be amazed by the arts Pixar. The theme is very clear.

With the soundtrack of the Incredibles playing, visiting the exhibition hall likes taking an adventure with all my favorite characters, wondering what coming next at the exhibition will surprise me and how Pixar team performs their superpower to bring imagination into digital lives. At the entrances of the hall, we can view the work-in-progress versions of our friends showed on the screen; they are structured in a green-web surface, or just in plain colours without shade, unveiling a part of the secret how they are born into human-like characters.

Seeing the works of hundreds of contributing artists, mainly includes the designs of characters with their hundreds of facial expression and bodies movements illustrated in pastel, digital sketches and pencil, raw but lively. There is a sketch capturing the moment how Buzz Lightyear rockets to the sky; and the clay model which Mr. Incredible’s face is molded into an extremely surprised one with his large, bare chin dropped and brows frowned; and how the vanillin in ToyStory 3, Lotso, changed its image form a spiky, little, toy bear to a pink, puffy, and cute looking but devilish bear, and there are more thought-provoking paintings and sketches displayed.

The Script and the World

Before I went to the exhibition, I cannot help asking what makes an animation so popular. Pixar gives us a clear answer-excellent cooperation of talents. And its success, first, begins on the script.

A script is the origin of the story, telling the audience what happens, who involves, to whom, and how the characters think and react in the designed situation. Spending three-forth of the time to plusses a story is more than the time that I had expected they spent on visualization process. Prestigious is all they wanted, and, however, continuous edition is required to make it entertaining, exciting and reel.

So, because of the team’s superb imagination, we can have a story about a mouse who is able to do terrific French cuisines with his inborn tastes and faculties; and the one that toys can think and act like human, but only desire to performs its duties-being played with children, namely, their owners; but also that an electricity company ran by professional Monsters who are hired to scare children to make them scream to gain energy.

Though they are imaginative, but we can always find ourselves in it. That’s their secret. We experience all the up and downs like what Shelly, the blue fluffy monster experience at his company, or how we desire people’s love like what Woody and Buzz did, and how our family endure challenges like the Incredibles family do. All these stories possess the elements, emotions, desires, hopes and dreams that we can all relate to.

After finishing the story on script, artists are required to visualize its sequence into colorfully illustrated drawings based on the dialogue and action from the script, and pin it on the corkboard, which is like a film showing how things happen in the movie. That is what we call, the Storyboard.

 And it evolves. It becomes the feature of the show- storyboard. All storyboards compose a stream of movements, and edited into sequences, which captured the essence of story, and edited into scenes with the characters’ emotions and actions exquisitely depicted to tell the story.

At there, I was impresses by the storyboard of Ratatouille, painted in digital form but show no stern of computer painting, giving us a feeling of pastel painting, telling us the story of how Remy and the mouse meet under the deem light nearby the river, influencing us with the colors of blue and black. I can experience the same depression after Remy and Linguini are expelled by where they belonged to. The paintings are soft and colourful, quiet but emotional.

With artists’ work, setting its colours tone, mood of the scenes, the designs of characters, and finally digitalizing it into a raw vision of moving sequence. Here come to the digital artists’ work to polish all of it into detailed scenes with shading and textures added, and they even have to smooth the movement of characters, just in order to making it what we seen reel!

Finally, after the enormous process of digital animation, adding sounds is a must to create the world in the movie. From the voices of characters to the minor sound effects, and even the soundtracks performed by an orchestra and composed for the dialogue, every sound is finely toned in order to make the situation that the characters and audience are in real.

Pixar brings the audience to a world that does not exist, and offer an opportunity to artists to conjure imaginative universes. Like the micro world of ToyStory, we can see how the artists craft the scene on story board and set its layout and mood. The scene Buzz realizes the evil plan of Lotso and totters in the dark vending machine is sketched separately into about twenty drafts composing a stream of Buzz’s adventure. It makes us experience the limitation of being a toy, like Buzz’s and his rigor to save his friend, meanwhile, showing us how the artists put their vision into the toy’s one.

The process of animation is just like how Michelangelo visualize his raw pencil sketches drawn on his tightly sketch-book into the world famous paintings hang on the church. The only difference are, Pixar’ artists are not working alone, and that the content are designed without limitation. “Others collaborators are welcomed to add their own interpretation, shadings and insights into the story.” This collaborative process may move the production towards perfect by the story being kept on improved and polished into the final essence.

The Characters

We can see ourselves through them. And “they must have something that we can relate to.” said the director of Pixar. Based on the principles, a character must moves the story forward.

Like the Incredibles family; Dash is a ten-year-old kid with full of energy; is a teenage girl who often doubt herself; Mrs. Incredible give up her heroin business for the family; and Mr. Incredible is a father who endures his mundane work in order to protect his family. Their strengths are exploding, but what they are doing is suppressing.

The thought and emotions is easy for the audience to recall. And, the designs of characters must present their personalities; however, the artists have to work out figures for all characters depicted on the script.

What I understand is making an animation is an effort of cumulative efforts of their large creative team of Pixar. “Unlike live-action films with real sets and actors, the animated environment and characters don’t live outside the imagination of the director.” expressed the team. That why producing an animation with fantastic and realistic lighting, texture, and sound-effects consume enormous works.

We have a glimpse at all the production of Pixar. And there are another interesting sections. Visitors can understand how quiet models with a moving-stream postures moves into an action at the circling machine. And we can visualize our imagination right after the exhibition at the drawing corner set outside the hall. There are numerous pastel painting contributed by visitors from all walks of lives to have a look at their little space.

Interesting and entertaining as the animations does the exhibition.

After all, thanks, Pixar.