Welcome to my Portfolio webpage! My name is Ashley Dillon, and as of June 6, 2025, I will have graduated from Freestyle Academy an be taking all the amazing memories I made there with me into what I anticipate will be an exciting future as an Animation and Biological Science double major at Chapman University. One of my final Senior year Digital Media class assignments was to create a Portfolio webpage to display some of my best creative work. The purpose of this project is that if someone were interested in seeing my work (and potentially commissioning me for more of it!) that I have a way to show them my best creations. However, it has a second application of being a method to display what I’ve created at Freestyle to my family and friends even as my time here comes to an end. If you are interested in viewing 3 of my best high-school creations and my explanations for how I created them, please continue reading. I hope you enjoy!
1) “A Ballerina” Animatic
The first project I would like to feature is a short animatic I created as part of my Senior Zenith Project. The symbolic meaning of the word Zenith is “the point in the sky or celestial sphere directly above an observer.” To me, this represents how this project celebrates how Freestyle are at the peak of their abilities at the end of Senior year because of the wide variety of skills they have accumulated. During the project, seniors choose a topic of their choice (that usually relates to their film, design, or animation elective class) and essentially create their own assignment. They create a timeline, plan, and rubric, and after being approved by their teacher, engage in a little over a month of self directed work time on that project.
My Zenith project was focused on exploring the career of a storyboard artist, and what skills are needed for it. This animatic was meant to showcase what I learned over the course of my zenith about using narrative structure, good technical ability/draftsmanship, and effective cinematic techniques to communicate with a viewer. For my animatic, I began by choosing 2 of my original characters and and audio to animate them to. These are the 2 characters I chose, Shade (left, red) and Ayla (right, blue).
Shade is characterized in my as quiet, very driven/determined, more empathic than most assume. Meanwhile, Ayla can be described as “calculated chaos;” teasing and sassy, but also intelligent and manipulative. Using my characters, the basic story I planned for my animatic is along the lines of “2 contracted criminals, waiting on a rooftop for the go ahead to start their current job, discuss what they wanted to be when they were younger.” After that, I created some simplistic thumbnail sketches to guide me while I was creating the frames for my animation.
Finally, I put it all together with some SFX using Adobe After Effects. You can view my final Zenith Animatic, “A Ballerina,” by clicking on the video below.
2) Showcase Animation Reel
This piece is a short animation reel I created for showcase website assignment in my Digital Media class. Essentially, students were tasked with creating 2 videos and featuring them on this website in the form of a Showcase page. The first video focused on a specific project the student believed was one of their greatest works, and the second video (the reel) was meant to show a wider variety of work the student has done, usually in their elective class (either Animation, Film, or Design). Then, a creative reviewer in one of the student’s areas of interest (for me, animation) looks at the Showcase webpage and gives the student feedback on their work.
For this reel, I chose a mix of content I created in my both my Junior and Senior years of Animation class. In Junior year, I learned about the fundamentals of animation and practiced solely 2D animation, while in Senior year, I learned exclusively about 3D animation and modeling. One thing I was surprised by when I was creating the reel was the quality of the some of the animations I made in my Junior year. I had anticipated including basically none of my Junior year work in my reel, since I have improved in skill since then. However, I found that a lot of my Junior work was higher quality than I remembered, especially when made with traditional mediums (like the flip-book). In any case, I beleive that this reel does a good job of accurately displaying what I I’ve learned about the variety of animation by showing my work in a variety of mediums with different types of subject matter and styles. It made me proud to look back on all the work I’ve done in my elective while at Freestyle, and I hope to continue building my skill to create things that are even better in the future.
You can view the 2D and 3D Animation Showcase Reel I created below.
3) Multi-Layer Wood Art: “Paradox of Humanity”
For my final portfolio piece, I am featuring an art piece I created from multiple layers of laser-cut wood, titled “Paradox of Humanity.” This project was conceptualized as a result of my Senior World-building project, in which I collaborated with a group of my peers to create an original dystopian sci-fi narrative which we titled “Paradox Six.” After finishing the World-building project in English, I took the ideas I had collaborated on there into my Digital media class. Using Adobe Illustrator, I designed a layered art piece that explores the internal conflict of a character I created, named C26. C26 is an artificial intelligence grappling with her identity and purpose in a world that seeks only to weaponize her. The overarching message of my English group’s project was that instead of fearing the transformative power of new technologies like AI, we should actively embrace adaptation to change as a means of enriching our lives. By showing C26 a a mix of human and robot parts, and by engraving the question, “what does it mean to be human?” on my piece, I hoped to convey to viewers a the importance of finding a balance between celebrating whats makes us human while innovating and adapting to the new technologies that shape the modern world.
Although the majority of the designing part of my process was done digitally, the very first thumbnail sketches I made were done traditionally, with oen and paper. I came up with about 5 variations of what my project might look like, before picking the one that I liked the most. My next task was to actually create that design in Adobe Illustrator, which would format it in a way that allowed the laser cutter to understand what I wanted it to do. But before I could begin creating my design for the laser cut pieces in Adobe Illustrator, I needed to plan them out first. So, I began by sketching what I wanted my final product to look like in a digital drawing application called procreate, and then traced the sketches in Illustrator layer by layer. You can view both my traditional thumbnail drawing and my digital procreate sketches by clicking on the gallery below.
Finally, I finished tracing my sketches in Illustrator, and was able to send them off to be laser cut. I got back the pieces a few days later, and it was time for assembly. It was difficult at times to know what went where because my design had a lot of small pieces, especially in areas like the fingers. However, by using my procreate sketches as a guide, I was able to assemble everything correctly using copious amount of wood glue and clamps to hold it together while it was drying. You can view a video of me assembling the wood layers below.
When I finished the project, I was quite happy with it. I considered it a job well done and looked forward to taking it home at the end of the year. However, little did I know, one of my teachers had submitted it as a candidate in the California Student Media Festival, or CSMF. Much to my surprise, several months after completing the project, I was notified that my project had been chosen as a finalist! In addition to that, it was a nominee for the STEAM special award category that would be revealed at an award ceremony in Hollywood. Unfortunately, I could not attend the ceremony, since I was several hours away. However, I did make one final contribution to my Multi-layering project by writing a script for and recording a brief acceptance speech to be layed in case I did win the STEAM category. Which, again, to my surprise… I did win! It was an amazing way to end my Senior year, and I am incredibly grateful to my Freestyle mentors for sending in my art, since I never would have done it myself. You can view the video of the award ceremony for my piece below.
Thank you for viewing my Portfolio page!