Reflections Project Introduction
My Personal Mandalas
Our first big project of the year in Digital media was the Mandala Project. After getting introduced to Illustrator last year, we continued on our journey by creating templates, using a special Illustrator feature that duplicates what is drawn in a portion of a circle, all the way around the circle. That way, we could just draw a small portion and have it revolve around in a cool way. Affter creating templates, we created our B&W mandala, then continued with a colored Mandala, and created a build reveal video. Our BW mandala then got laser engraved on a material of our choice.
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To answer “Who am I?” for this piece, I originally wanted to incorporate many symbols that represent me, ranging from activities to personality traits to any specific thing I find interesting. Pretty quickly I narrowed in on nature and movement.
For the center design, I originally was intending to draw a bicycle wheel to resemble my passion for cycling. However, I had already drawn bicycle wheels before for projects, and this time decided to keep it very simple. Instead, the sparse wavy lines with a perfectly clear circle in the middle represent a flow state, something I love getting into with sports and life in general. Other things I added included palm trees, music notes, musical strings, tents, campfires, ocean waves, mountains, birds, an atmospheric sunset, clouds, lightning, and more. Using the pressure sensitive brush was a new experience because before I had often resorted to the computer mouse as it felt more natural. Although I still resorted to the mouse towards the end, I can totally see potential with the pressure sensitivity part if l make more intricate digital artwork in the future.
My BW Mandala was the first time that I put that many symbols of myself into a single artwork. After the process of creating it, I’ve become a little more appreciative of visual art and how you can get a sense of the artist’s identity just by looking at it.
For my colored mandala, I had the mindset of extending my BW mandala, adding color to the different symbols. My initial reaction upon seeing the printed version was a slight sense of awe, as what I had previously only imagined on the computer was now a real life object.
For the color scheme, I wanted each symbol to be colored the way they would be in real life. With the center design representing a flow state, I was unsure of how to color it as I had always imagined it in black & white. I eventually settled on red, as red is the most passionate evocative color. I also loosely tried to keep similar colors together. Looking back, that was something I could have improved on. In the future, I will probably focus on a more specific scheme.
The build reveal video shows how my B&W Mandala came together. It was my first time using After Effects, and it won’t be the last:
Reflection: My initial reaction to seeing my laser engraved mandala was a subtle sense of pride. After not being too proud of my colored mandala, the laser engraving looked like it was just meant to be on that pizza board. I was also surprised at how much the laser managed to capture the smaller details, although some details were still lost.
I chose a pizza board because I thought it was a bit of a quirky place to put an artwork like a mandala. Thus, it represents that aspect of me. I also like pizza.
My reflections about the entire mandala project from creating mandala templates, BW mandala with pressure sensitive brushes, colored mandala, build reveal video, and final laser engraved mandala mostly include a sense of relief. Creating the templates was mostly a straightforward process—until I moved beyond the video tutorials. I had to start over a couple times after doing a few things out of order. For the BW mandala, I think I could have utilized the pressure sensitive brush more and used more brushes. I found myself often resorting to the computer mouse as the small drawing area of the brush pad often caused the cursor to sprint across the screen out of control. A simple fix probably would’ve done. Had I had more time, I also would have liked to create a separate colored mandala, as I had colored my BW mandala which I wasn’t convinced had much potential for coloring. As for the build reveal video, it was a brief glimpse into After Effects. It was pretty cool to watch the process I had taken for the BW mandala play out in front of me. Through this project, I’ve picked up a better eye for artistic expression and can find ways to incorporate it in future art projects.