Color Rendering

Tips and Tricks: 2012/13 F.I.T (AAS Fashion Design) Portfolio Requirements

Some of my info is a little dated. I see F.I.T. shortened the requirements A LOT from when I applied.
I may add to it more if I think of anything, but I'm just throwing out a few ideas for you all working with the new requirements.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments:)

--also, I added a Google translator,  hopefully if you need it, it will work for you.

Tailoring Your Portfolio: Strengths and Weaknesses

I got an email the other day from a reader that inspired this post. She was good at sewing and had looks done for the garment portion of her test, and wanted to sketch them, but was wondering if she should still do a mini collection like I'd suggested here. I told her she should definitely just sketch the looks she'd sewed instead. Since she was better at sewing that worked for her. I chose to do my mini collection since sketching was my stronger more confident area. For some of you, you may feel equally good at sketching and sewing. Make sure that whatever area you feel weaker in you work the longest and the hardest on (I wanted to throw my sewing machine out of my window).

RC

Design Test

I will be uploading a tips and tricks for drawing soon. But just wanted to share the sketches from my design test I picked Spring in Tokyo Japan. The purpose of the design test is for F.I.T. to see your ability to merchandise, this is why you can only use a certain set of looks and you have to mix and match them. I hate the coloring on the first one, I remember being scared the marker would blur out the detail lol.

Tips and Tricks (Updated with Sketches)

1. When doing the fashion artwork portion of the test. Do a mini collection instead of random dresses. If you are a particularly great sketcher, you can throw something in that doesn't go. But my advice would be to design a collection around that outfit.
Why? is what you might be asking. The reason is this. F.I.T. is primarily looking for students that can get jobs when they graduate, the more students that find jobs the more money they get from the state. I know that doesn't sound glamorous does it? Yet it's true. If you show them that you can focus your ideas, you get the edge.

Here's what I did for my portfolio. Excuse some of the coloring, it just goes to show you don't have to have a prefect portfolio to get excepted. The theme I chose was cocooning.

Some of My Portfolio Work

I will also upload a tips and tricks post, about little extras I did that I feel rounded out my portfolio

Copying Poses

Everyone has different styles, copying a pose doesn't mean you have to get it exact. You just use it to get familiar with proportion. I kind of got tired of my poses, which looked kind of stiff, and everything looked similar, so this year I started experimenting with different poses to use for my portfolio. Changing your poses gives people something to look at that's unexpected, not to mention it can really add mood to your garment.
Here's one I did. I ripped this photo out of Oprah Magazine. I had intentions to put it up days ago. But considering the fact that my room is so sloppy I could hide t-rex fossils, Sam and Dean Winchester(whoo!) and a pack of wolves in here it took me some time to muster the strength to look for them.

I chose the middle pose

Sketching

A lot of people recommend Nine Heads. I've never read it, but if you're like me and don't want to spend the money, get it from the library first, you might find something you like better. I will be adding to the recommended reading category on the blog. If you are at least an intermediate artist. Meaning you know you can get better but can generally copy something. Budget wise (broke) you can check voguepatterns.com which has a lot of great sketches with multiple poses, color rendering for different fabrics. It will help you a lot even if it's different from your art style, it will help with proportion. You do, after all want the sketches to be as tight as they can possibly be.