The Secret Garden Window SS14

When building my portfolio for my entrance interview for my design course, I put together a few mood boards for idea's and theme's I had stored in my head. One of them was connected to a movie I adored from my childhood The Secret Garden. I was drawn to this movie for so many reasons and watched it over and over again. The character of Mary Lennox who was confused and miss understood, the relationship she built with a long lost cousin and the traumatic experiences her family had yet over came were all situations I could personally relate to, but the one that stood out the most, was the renovation of the garden. 

Mary stumbled upon a key that unlocks a garden, a garden once used by her aunt to grow roses, a secret garden that had been locked for 10 years. Time is spent to bring the garden back to life and the end result is beautiful. The restoration of this garden takes affect on many people on the grounds and reunites a once torn apart family. Living things have healing power, It is an inspiring breathtaking story.

With the SS catwalks showcasing a serious amount of blossom prints, a wide palette of pastel and bold colours present in the collections, inspiration from photoshoots and magazine's and a want to experience some sort of real summer (one can never count on Irish weather) I set upon drawing in my head my plan for my Spring Summer 14 window display.

The most important stage of the any window display project is the prep. I had begun the process before Christmas, and with a date in February in mind , I first took a look at what was already available to me, how could I source what I needed and at the best price, and as I began to see things come together, it got better and better.

Before the window installation D day and during the quiet sale period I began my preparations.

Old planks of wood from floor boards were used to create the garden gate.

A trolley full of bricks borrowed from a builder were used to imitate the garden wall.

Trellis was primed and painted and used as an overhead grate for hanging.

And a serious amount of vines and foliage were purchased for draping and decoration.

And Now............The Finished Project

To me, its the little things. Like the vintage watering can I found on ebay, and the bird cage I found in the stockroom, but most importantly the rustic ladder which once belonged to my grandad.

The most rewarding part about being a display specialist???

After all the hammering, swinging out of ladders and being a glorified window cleaner...stepping back, taking it all in and knowing it was most definitely worth it. Any creative role is a rewarding one! It is you. Your mind, your soul. And expressing you and being accepted is the greatest feeling the world. 

Always always, be yourself.

Grá go Deo

Claire

xxx

One Huge Challenge The Rock's Character Created For Moana And Its Animators

This latest movie releases from Disney is a master of animation MOANA. You must be watching .. heheh... Which might lead one to believe that they know exactly how to do everything perfectly. After decade upon decade of making animated feature films, certainly they've done it all, right? However, even the best still have challenges they must overcome. The Rock's character of the demigod Maui in their upcoming film Moana was a very special case for the animation team for a very unusual reason: most Disney characters wear more clothing than he does.

It might be something that you don't notice very often, but most Disney characters wear clothes. As such, you never have to see a characters' muscles reacting to their movements. Maui, the demigod from Moana, isn't covered in clothing, just tattoos. During the Moana panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Animation Supervisor Amy Sneed explained that her team had some unique challenges to overcome, but they succeeded.

Maui you'll notice...he's not wearing a shirt. Usually on our films, the characters, the clothing hides a lot of their muscle and skin and anatomy, so we spent a lot of time, our supervising animator Mack Kablan, spent a lot of time with the rigging supervisor and created all the muscle shapes so as Maui's moving around different muscles are engaging.

We got to see some animation examples of Maui's movements in the panel, running and jumping around, and you really can see his different muscles interacting with each other as he moves. One doesn't necessarily think about the idea of animation going down to the muscular level, but somebody needs to do that work to animate the different parts of the body reacting to different movements. While some of the early response to Moana has been critical because Maui looks to be overweight, which reinforces a negative stereotypes of the Polynesian culture, what you really see here is that Maui isn't fat, he's just really damned big. In fact, I'm convinced that what we see in the Teaser Trailer isn't fat, but pure muscle. This is The Rock, after all.

Maui wasn't the only challenge that the animators faced. Water itself, as can be seen in the international trailer, is a character itself and animating it to move properly was also difficult. While the name of the movie may be Moana, Maui is just as important a character to the plot of the film. The two will work together to navigate the oceans of the South Pacific in order to return order to the world. We'll see the results of that quest, as Moana hits theaters this Thanksgiving.