Ah, my final art project for the year 2000... The theme for this one was 'Dreams, Chance and Hallucinations- Dada and Surrealism'. Max Ernst was my major influence- the random shapes he created with his declomanie technique. My outside influence were the goddesses and sorceresses of Final Fantasy 8. This scanty costume was designed for the ultimate enemy, Ultimecia. I don't think my art teacher took it very seriously (and who could, really?!) but I still got an A! :) Got many weird looks from people for this one! *nyuck nyuck*

Here's the Self-Evaluation from my folio:
"'Ultimecia's Apocalypse Get-Up' connects to the theme "Dreams, Chance & Hallucinations" for its fantastical appearance. This costume is that of an evil sorceress- hence the use of blood red and black, colours immediately associated with death and maliciousness. My final costume was inspired from the characters of the videogame, "Final Fantasy VIII". Ultimecia is the name of the supreme enemy in the game- the evil Sorceress who intiially takes over the world's most powerful military organisation and ultimately wishes to compress time and space itself. Ultimecia's devastating attack spell is called "Apocalypse", I thought the colours and design of my costume were rather fitting to the Apocalypse theme, and decided to name the costume "Ultimecia's Apocalypse Get-Up", indicating that I'm not taking so skimpy a costume too seriously by giving it a fancy-shmancy name that evokes the rolling of eyeballs heavenwards!
From the start of the project I was interested in "Surrealism in the Media", and started by examing the garmetns of StarWars' Queen Amidala.Her bizarre headdress reminded me of that of Sorceress Edea's on FF8. I tried experimenting with automatism and declomanie, which produced the swirling, flame-like shapes I encorporated into the costume design- like that of the Goddesses Siren and Shiva from FF8. The feathers and flowing, soft material from Edea's costume also influenced my final designs. All in all, this project has been my most successful. I'm very happy with the quality of my drawings and the visual impact of my studio piece. (Which I'm afraid would not be very functional for an actual person to wear!) I was afraid that my studio piece may fail or at least take a very long time to complete- it didn't. The fabric behaved itself beautifully, although the wire in the flames was being difficult. Don't even ask about the expenses..."

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