Final Fast Fashion animation communicating sustainability issues.

First Animation – Fast Fashion: Drowning in Clothes. Animation Link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFPnqjSXEAc The first animation I decided to take design inspiration from is called Fast Fashion – Drowning in Clothes. The animation is based on the significant amount of clothing waste produced by the fast fashion industry, which has a detrimental impact on our environment. The concept delves into conceptual design, using clever transitions to keep the audience engaged. The animation takes the viewer on a journey around the world forming popular landmarks out of t-shirts which represent the amount of waste created by mass consumption. Developing my animation design I have been able to implement some properties of the production in a different manner. The final scene in my animation shows the world exploding into clothing representing how fast fashion and mass consumption is taking over the world. Second Animation – Selfridges Hot Air: Material World. Animation Link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge75wDT_5Ik&t=50s The second animation I decided to take design inspiration from is a Selfridges advert called Hot Air: Material World. The animation aims to raise awareness on the benefits of sustainable shopping and offers alternatives to the damaging fabrics and production methods used in fast fashion. The animation is full of conceptual design transitions that help to tell the story and keep the audience engaged. Scenes merge together using transformations, such as the flower transforming into a stud on the jacket (0.17 seconds). My animation has been influenced by the Selfridges advert in many ways including the conceptual transitions, my design has multiple keyframes where one aspect transforms into another, helping the animation to flow as one without harsh breaks. I have also been inspired by the vibrant colour palette and style of animation used throughout the video. The style and colours are youthful and playful, which helps draw the younger audience in, which is important because most fast fashion consumers are of a younger generation. Third Animation – Why is Clothing so Cheap? – A Film about Sustainable Consumption. Animation Link –Why is clothing so cheap? – A film about sustainable consumption – YouTube The final animation I decided to take design inspiration from is called Why is Clothing so Cheap? – A Film about Sustainable Consumption. The animation demonstrates the fast fashion industry’s unethical impacts and on the factory workers and the planet. The design is conceptual and uses red thread to transition through the scenes, the red thread being a conscious choice of colour as it can be used to represent danger, anger, pain, and more emotions the factory workers will be feeling producing fast fashion in an unsafe environment. The animation is relevant to my first initial animation design as it uses a red thread to transition through a couple of scenes in the beginning. I decided not to carry this design aspect over to my final animation because it didn’t fit in with the new concept of focusing on sustainability. References Fast fashion: Drowning in clothes (2020) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFPnqjSXEAc (Accessed: February 24, 2023).  Selfridges hot air: Material World (2017) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge75wDT_5Ik&t=50s (Accessed: February 24, 2023).  Why is clothing so cheap? – A film about sustainable consumption (2018) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLcCjS6bsZw (Accessed: February 24, 2023). 

Psychometrics Form ‘Psychometric testing provides a rounded view of a candidate, revealing their logical processes, aptitude for problem-solving, and ability to interpret and analyse a range of data. Just as importantly, they also provide an insight into their personality traits, integrity, and how they might fit into an existing team.’ (Turner, M. 2021).  The first assigned task was to watch some clips from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly a film directed by Sergio Leone and the theme song performed by The Danish National Orchestra on YouTube. The class was then split into groups and asked to complete a psychometrics form based on the orchestra performance. We had to determine what role we would take on from the video and then share it with the group. I didn’t attend the lecture, so I made sure to ask for feedback from classmates in other ways and found out if they agreed with my choices.  After filling out the psychometric form and hearing what others thought of my self-judgement and listening to others, I began to understand why the testing is so important. It helped determine the best project leader for the future assignment, which turned out to be Abbie, who is a lot like the conductor. The testing also relieved a lot about others’ personalities and capabilities which helped determine the next assignment order and brought out new ideas.  Flipbook Development The team-working storyboard is based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a children’s book written and illustrated by Eric Carle. This task aims to encourage working productively as part of a team, ensuring everyone is given the correct place and task to guarantee the highest quality of the individual flipbooks in a short period of time. The children’s book highly inspired the flipbooks, which involved the same overall concept. Abbie was chosen as the project leader and assigned each individual task to the team members. Although I was absent from the lecture, I was given guidance from Abbie on what to produce for the class. The video below shows my flipbook contribution to the project, the caterpillar enters the frame from the left, eats an apple and then exits the frame at the right. This was decided in the lecture and the initial design process was illustrated by the attending team members.  Below is my contribution to the flipbook task, the flipbook shows a caterpillar eating an apple through the core and the rest falling behind as it exits the scene. Completing this task helped me understand the importance of keyframes and how animation works through layers. I realised I made the mistake of drawing the apple later on in the flipbook as I couldn’t match it up with the beginning frames, this is something I will work on in the future. This method of animation is time-consuming and difficult to copy the same frames in a consistent way so that all the frames match and flow together. References DR Koncerthuset (2018) The good, the bad and the ugly – the Danish national symphony orchestra (live) (2018) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enuOArEfqGo (Accessed: February 27, 2023).  Turner, M. (2021) Psychometric testing in recruiting – is it important?, Picked. Available at: https://www.picked.ai/magazine/why-psychometric-testing-in-recruiting-is-getting-more-important/ (Accessed: February 27, 2023). 

Initial Animation Design Planning I decided to base my animation on fast fashion. The subject combines sustainability and ethical issues that the population should be made more aware of. Educating myself and others on the consequences of fast fashion will hopefully positively change the way we shop.  The progression of creating initial animation designs included making a list of words that I believed were associated with the industry. I began to develop storyboards surrounding initial thoughts and ideas, including ethical and sustainable examples.  The first animation is the developing final design. The animation uses earth in an impactful way to portray the message of some of the harmful consequences of the fast fashion industry.  Development of Animation Design Further developing the initial animation design, changes were made to the storyboard enhancing the overall message. The addition of a consumer placing an order before the consequences are communicated added to the overall flow of the message. This is because without the consumer fast fashion wouldn’t exist.  Upon examining how the animation would play out it became apparent that the design held little to no conceptual design transitions. I began to take notes on how I could implement conceptual design into the animation. Adding movement to the planet and the consequences themselves made room for more conceptual transition ideas.   Initial Animation Design Planning – Final Design After planning and developing the first animation design I decided to make some changes to the concept. The final animation will focus on some of the leading sustainability issues surrounding fast fashion such as emissions and landfill. The first reason I decided to redevelop my animation was that I struggled to figure out how to implement conceptual design transitions between the keyframes. The second reason behind changing the animation slightly is the fact that I have no previous experience using Animate and after experimenting with the software I have realised that I don’t have a long enough timeframe to produce the whole animation at a high standard which meant I had to sacrifice some initial ideas. Development of Animation Design – Final Design Redeveloping the final design has made it easier to implement conceptual design transitions, such as adding transformations between key frames that form a connection and help the animation flow from scene to scene. The images below are showing the development of the animation in frames, this helped me understand how the animation will transition between scenes. The animation starts with the earth spinning which transitions into a protest representing sustainability issues surrounding fast fashion, which then transitions back into the earth. The final frames involve the earth disappearing into space and exploding into clothing which will fill the screen at the end. The aim of the animation is to show how the fast fashion industry is taking over the world. Developing the animation without the final background made it easier to implement and understand how to make the transitions work smoothly together, making sure to edit each asset separately to the correct motion tweak. The final animation will have a developed backdrop behind the protest representing landfill and emissions as seen in the initial animation design.

Introduction to sustainability  ‘Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities.’ (Commission, 1987). Introduction to ethics  ‘Ethics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with human conduct, more specifically the behaviour of individuals in society. Ethics examines the rational justification for our moral judgments; it studies what is morally right or wrong, just, or unjust.’ (Secretariat, 2015) Fast Fashion  Fast fashion is killing our planet and our people.  Fast fashion refers to cheaply mass-produced clothing that is easily accessible and affordably priced. Brands such as H&M, Zara, Shien, and Miss guided are all examples of fast fashion brands, the clothing they sell are adaptations of high fashion designer pieces that have trickled down from catwalks. It has become the norm in today’s society to shop for fast fashion, especially among young female consumers. The pressure to keep up with current trends and the constant strain of clever marketing tactics flooding online platforms such as TikTok and Instagram make fast fashion ever more appealing. (Sampson, E. 2022). The fast fashion industry has a devastating impact on the environment and society. Statistics show that the industry contributes to almost 10% of global emissions yearly, which is constantly on the rise due to mass consumption. Almost 1.5 trillion litres of water are required to produce clothing each year, water which is contaminated by harmful toxins and then released as waste back into the environment. Also, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles end up in landfills yearly, these are just a handful of negative environmental impacts. Our thirst for fast fashion is causing devastating consequences that future generations will be left to combat, this is because we rarely see the diverse effects our actions have on the planet until it becomes too late. (Seymour, E. 2022).  Fast fashion is not only killing our planet but also our people. Adults and children all over the world are exploited daily for fashion, made to work long hours for little income, in harmful conditions. The Rana Plaza garment factory collapse is just one example of how unethical the industry is. The disaster happened in 2013 killing 1132 people, due to corruption and construction legislation being ignored. (Rahman. 2022). The purpose of my subject My developing fast fashion animation aims to raise awareness of the industry’s negative impacts on us and our environment. As the subject negatively impacts sustainability and ethics, I believe it is important to address the harmful consequences of our actions. As a fast fashion culprit myself, I have succumbed to the luxury of being able to purchase affordable clothing at the click of a finger, with no mindfulness as to who made it or where it came from. Therefore, educating myself and others on the impacts of our fast fashion addiction will hopefully encourage people to shop more sustainably and recycle or donate unwanted clothing instead of throwing items away. The Target Audience  Fast fashion has no preferred consumer, although it is believed that ‘the target audience for fast fashion is consumers aged between 18 and 24, while women and girls consume fast fashion more than any other demographic group.’ (Sampson, E. 2022). Young people are much more influenced to buy fast fashion because of social media, 54% of young people believe that influencers are partly responsible for the rise in mass-produced clothing, and the statistics raise to 73% of people aged between 18 -24, (Ruiz, A. 2023). Therefore, the target audience for my animation is female social media users under the age of 24.  References Text References Commission, B. (1987) Our common future – un documents. Available at: http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf (Accessed: February 11, 2023).   Rahman, K. (2022) Nine years since the Rana Plaza Tragedy: Has fast fashion ironed out…, Transparency.org. Available at: https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/rana-plaza-tragedy-fast-fashion-deadly-corruption-problems (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Ruiz, A. (2023) 47 official Sustainable Fashion Statistics 2023 – The roundup, TheRoundup.org. Available at: https://theroundup.org/sustainable-fashion-statistics/ (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Sampson, E. (2022) Is fast fashion about self-expression or consumerism?, SfS. Available at: https://www.sustainabilityforstudents.com/post/is-fast-fashion-about-self-expression-or-consumerism (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Secretariat, T.B.of C. (2015) Government of Canada, Canada.ca. / Gouvernement du Canada. Available at: https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/values-ethics/code/what-is-ethics.html#A1 (Accessed: February 8, 2023).  Seymour, E. (2022) Nearly $183 million worth of clothing ends up in landfills each year, Good Housekeeping. Available at: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/beauty/fashion/a39662653/fast-fashion-definition/ (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Media References Figures 7 and 8 – Goodwin, J. (2021) The Rana Plaza Collapse: What Happened & What it means for fashion, Grow Ensemble. Available at: https://growensemble.com/rana-plaza/ (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Figure 9 – Shirvell, B. (2022) Fast fashion is an environmental catastrophe. is composting your clothes the solution?, Nexus Media News. Available at: https://nexusmedianews.com/compostable-clothing/ (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Figures 1 – 6 – Unsplash (2023) Beautiful free images & pictures, Unsplash. Available at: https://unsplash.com/ (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  Bibliography Fashion & environment (no date) SustainYourStyle. Available at: https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/whats-wrong-with-the-fashion-industry (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  The price of Fast Fashion (2018) Nature News. Nature Publishing Group. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0058-9?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=CONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK&utm_content=textlink&utm_term=PID100045652&CJEVENT=2ba06879a98d11ed83616ff10a18b8fa (Accessed: February 11, 2023).  The Rana Plaza Accident and its aftermath (2017) International Labour Organization. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/geip/WCMS_614394/lang–en/index.htm (Accessed: February 11, 2023).