Introduction

The explorations project is the final project of a Freestyle student’s Junior Year. In the final week of school, juniors gathered in the film room to present our explorations projects to each other and our teachers, as a celebration of all we had achieved. The goal of the project is to get students to pursue a passion or learn new skill that they hadn’t previously tried. The idea was that we would then have a new skill under our belts to incorporate into projects next year. As long as the project was somewhat art or technology-related, we could do it. Projects revolved around “twenty-first century skills” that freestyle values, like:

Visual Literacy – the ability to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that advance thinking, decision making, communication, and learning.
Technological Literacy – knowledge about what technology is, how it works, what purposes it can serve, and how it can be used efficiently and effectively to achieve specific goals.
Creativity – the act of bringing something into existence that is genuinely new, original, and of value either personally (of significance only to the individual or organization) or culturally (adds significantly to a domain of culture as recognized by experts).
Self Direction – the ability to set goals related to learning, plan for the achievement of those goals, independently manage time and effort, and independently assess the quality of learning and any products that result from the learning experience.
High Productivity – the ability to produce intellectual, informational, or material products that serve authentic purposes and occur as a result of students using real-world tools to solve or communicate about real-world problems. These products include persuasive communications in any media (print, video, the Web, verbal presentation), synthesis of resources into more useable forms (databases, graphics, simulations), or refinement of questions that build upon what is known to advance one’s own and others’ understanding.
Teaming and Collaboration – cooperative interaction between two or more individuals working together to solve problems, create novel products, or learn and master content.
Social and Civic Responsibility – the ability to manage technology and govern its use in a way that promotes public good and protects society, the environment, and democratic ideals.
Risk Taking – the willingness to make mistakes, advocate unconventional or unpopular positions, or tackle extremely challenging problems without obvious solutions, such that one’s personal growth, integrity, or accomplishments are enhanced.

For my project, I chose to make a short animation introducing my original characters. Physically, this challenged my time management, planning, animating, editing (both video and sound), and color/character design skills. Mentally, sharing original content that I had come up with challenged my risk-taking, presenting, storytelling, and ability to be vulnerable. Since I had not shared my art with others before freestyle, and especially not art that I was extremely passionate about, presenting this project to my classmates would be new for me.

Brainstorming

I knew I wanted to make an animation, but of what and to what audio I was unsure. Some of my original ideas were to make a music video, short story, or to practice more difficult types of animations like impact frames (the black and white frames right after explosions) or smears (the blurred frames that make a movement look fast). However, I ended up deciding to make a hybrid of all my ideas. I would animate character introductions to music, sort of like the opening to some tv shows.

After I decided what I wanted to do, I had to decide a few things; the song, what characters to animate, and a minimal plot or story to guide the animation. I found the song I wanted by listening to a playlist from NCS (NoCopyrightSounds). NCS is an extremely helpful artist that collaborates with other musicians to create non-copyrighted music for creators to use. The song I used is called “Take Me Back” by More Plastic.

Then, I decided to use original characters I had come up with, that had been floating around in my head for a while. They are from a universe I created in which many people have superhuman abilities. However, unlike most superhero franchises, this world was meant to be morally grey, and focus on how society shapes people into criminals, rather than just having the villains be evil for no particular reason.

The story follows a main character named Paradox (she is the girl with the indigo-deep blue eyes you will see in the later animation), who is considered to be evil by the general public. For the minimal plot of my animation, I decided to focus on a conflict between paradox and the hero agency (and organization resembling the American government made up of licensed heroes) attempting to arrest her. After I had the basics of my idea, it was time to begin planning how I would go forward. When planning my animation, I used a Google Doc, mainly for convenience. It was easy to organize and accessible almost anywhere.

Please click below to view the Google Doc I used to plan my Animation.

Character/Color Design

After planning my animation, I moved on to designing the characters I would use. I made 16 characters in total, and used 3 different design excerised for each one.

1. Each character character was meant to represent a different chess piece in the metaphorical chess game paradox and the hero agency were playing. This method of drawing out a rough headshot of the character and their chess piece helped me organize my thoughts. For example, I could keep track of which characters I put on the heroes’ side by looking at which ones had a white background. This also helped me keep track of the names I had given each character. I actually had to give some names because they had not been named before, despite being characters I had been developing for years.

2. Desginign rough outfits for each character gave me reference for each character’s part in the animation. It also gave me a better idea fo their stature (height, weight, balance, etc.) so that I could keep it consistent in the animation.

3. Finally, I drew a headshot or bust for each character. this helped me develop their color palette, and gave me a better sense of how their personality could shine through in the animation. For example, if a character looked better smiling in the headshot, then I would try to have them smiling in the final animation. Below, I included the headshot and a short description of all 16 of the characters that I made. Due to time constraints, only 9 of the characters actually made it into the animation.

Characters:

Storyboarding

After finishing my character designs, I began planning the different parts of my animation by storyboarding. The first one is for the beginning parts of the song, where the beat is slowly building up. The other storyboards are for the parts of the individual characters. Each character was meant to have 4 shots, with 3 being scenes and one being a bust of the character with a brief description of their name and abilities.

Storyboards further helped me develop the personality and color schemes of the characters. They were particularly helpful for trying out different background colors and seeing what worked best with the character.

Production and Post-Production

After finishing the storyboards, I began animating in procreate dreams. Procreate Dream is a recently released animation software made by Procreate, a company famous for its Procreate Digital Illustration app. I animate using Procreate Dreams for a couple of reasons;

1. It’s portable: I use Procreate Dreams on my iPad, so I can take it places with me, allowing me to get work done outside of freestyle or at my house. This gave me more time to get work done.
2. I am familiar with the controls because I have been using Procreate for a long time, so it is easier for me.
3. Tweening (when the computer animates what you drew using keyframes) is pretty fast and easy in Procreate Dreams, and saved me from wasting time editing on a different software.

Below is an image of my workspace in Procreate Dreams:

I began each part by making a rough sketch of the movement, and then filling in key frames. Then, I cleaned up the line art and colored it in. Finally, I added background and tweens. Then I exported the animations out of procreate to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro. There, I edited the animation clips so that they would sync to the audio in certain places. I also added text introducing the project and the characters.

This is the Final Product of my Explorations project. Please enjoy!

Presentation

The final part of this project was to present it to the rest of my classmates during the final week of school. There were a couple of different requirements for this part, including a Script, Slideshow, and custom Graphic Design Elements we had to create.

Please click below to view the script I planned for my presentation:

Click on the image below to view the slide show I presented:

Below is a video of my explorations presentation to my peers and teachers:

All in all, I really valued the Explorations project. I didn’t necessarily learn a completely new skill, but I still challenged myself in multiple ways. I learned how important time management and planning are to animation projects, in addition to improving my animation skills. It was also a huge exercise in vulnerability and honesty. I had to present ideas that I was passionate about to an audience I didn’t know. It sounds trivial, but sharing my art is not something I am used to doing, especially not art I am very passionate about. Being able to share art and receive constructive criticism is really important to being an artist, and this project helped me open up to presenting my original ideas.

Music Recording Project

For the music recording project, I collaborated with two of my classmates, Lillian Husky and Stella Cedar. The goal of this project was to get students familiar with the brand new recording studio installed in Freestyle this year. The studio is pretty professional, with a multitude of instruments and mics, a separate recording room and control room, with headphones through the participants in each room can communicate through. Since we had one week until school ended to finish the project, my group figured it would be difficult to get something original done on time. So, we focused on learning more about the new studio and recording procedures by replicating a song that already existed.

Lillian and I decided to do a duet for a song, while Stella is pretty talented with a guitar. So, we compared songs we liked to decide what we would create, with Stella focusing on playing Guitar and Lillian and I focusing on vocals. We eventually chose the song BEGGIN by Maneskin. Stella focused on learning the guitar parts while Lillian and I practiced together. We split up the lyrics so that we would be switching off singing alone and singing together. While we were practicing, we booked a time to record a couple of days later.

Click below to view the document we used to plan our project:

There were some complications in getting a time to record nailed down. Because the finals schedule was different than what we were used to, we didn’t realize that our initial time was during class. So, by asking around, we were able to get a spot from someone whose partner was sick and unable to record. We were not able to record everything we needed in the first hour, so we had to return to the studio for another booking we had made an hour later. In total, we recorded two or more takes of me and Lillian’s vocal track, a track with Lillian playing a snare drum and me playing a high hat, a track with Stella’s guitar parts. Then, Stella edited the composition while Lillian designed the album cover. The album cover was meant to resemble the original artist’s album cover for the song we recreated. We decided to make it a little sillier, and included our Digital Media teacher as well as ourselves in a parody of the original.

Our album cover:

Screenshots of our project in the software used to edit it:

Below, you can listen to our final production.

Expand the arrow below to view the artist’s statement I wrote for this project:

Title: FREESTYLIN’ (a BEGGIN by Maneskin Recreation by AshD, Lillian H, and Stella C)

For the music recording project, I collaborated with two of my classmates, Lillian Husky and Stella Cedar. The goal of this project was to get students familiar with the brand new recording studio installed in freestyle this year. The studio is pretty professional, with a multitude of instruments and mics, a separate recording room and control room, with headphones through the participants in each room can communicate through. Since we had one week until school ended to finish the project, my group figured it would be difficult to get something original done on time. So, we focused on learning more about the new studio and recording procedures by replicating a song that already existed.

Lillian and I decided to do a duet for a song, while Stella is pretty talented with a guitar. So, we compared songs we liked to decide what we would create, with Stella focusing on playing Guitar and Lillian and I focusing on vocals. We eventually chose the song BEGGIN by Maneskin. Stella focused on learning the guitar parts while Lillian and I practiced together. We split up the lyrics so that we would be switching off singing alone and singing together. Later, Lillian and I added some very basic drum parts using a snare drum and a high hat.

In the end, there are lots of things that could have been improved with this project. For example, I stuttered a lot on the faster parts of the song. We only had enough time to do 2 takes of each recording, so we were not able to get a clean take of my voice. However, I am glad that I did this project. I had a lot of fun working with Stella and Lillian, and am looking forward to doing more projects with my peers next year. I learned how to use the amazing recording equipment we now have at Freestyle, and now I should be able to use it effectively next year.

In the end, there are lots of things that could have been improved with this project. For example, I stuttered a lot on the faster parts of the song. We only had enough time to do 2 takes of each recording, so we were not able to get a clean take of my voice. However, I am glad that I did this project. I had a lot of fun working with Stella and Lillian, and am looking forward to doing more projects with my peers next year. I learned how to use the amazing recording equipment we now have at Freestyle, and now I should be able to use it effectively next year.

Lyrical Essay Project

A lyrical essay is a piece of creative writing in which the author tells a story or explains a point of view in unconventional ways. Lyrical essays are meant to break the traditional rules of writing essays. They come in many different forms, like annotated footnotes, narratives that use exclusively second person, and many more. In class, my classmates and I analyzed a multitude of lyrical essays, by authors like Maggie Nelson, Ryan Van Meter, Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Heidi Czerwiec, in addition to creative nonfiction pieces by Ander Monson and David Foster Wallace. We took notes and answered questions about each one, recording them in Google Docs as a reference for when we would need to write our own lyrical essays. When finished, each student would read their essay out to the class.

Click below to view the notes I took on other lyrical essays:

After we finished looking at other writer’s essays, it was time to make our own. I brainstormed several topics, but eventually landed on doing something based around metaphor use, like that in “Consider the Lobster Mushroom” by Ander Monson. In her piece, she uses a lobster mushroom as metaphor for creative nonfiction writing. My idea was to use parasites to represent how negative societal values are ingrained in people. I researched several sources, mostly relating to parasites and societal issues. I found that the sources that had specific stories related to parasites, or medical information regarding their behavior or treatments for them were particularly helpful.

I began drafting my essay, and revising with feedback from my peers and teacher. The final product was a bit more personal than I had originally planned, alluding to some of my own struggles with mental health during Quarantine years. However, I was pleased to discover that my classmates could find the essay relatable in some way. It contained references to the high expectations imposed upon kids in Silicon Valley. Being in a place where very accomplished people gather and where competition is constant isn’t always good for the mental stability of school children, and can cause serious problems when they don’t have the proper support. When I presented my essay in front of the class, my teacher asked if anyone had experienced “socialist parasites.” That is latin for “societal parasite,” and was also the title of my essay. The term was meant to represent the way negative societal values can become ingrained in children from a young age.

Click below to view my lyrical essay:

Since this is the last assignment of my Junior year, I wanted to take some time to reflect. This year at Freestyle Academy has been amazing for me. I did not come into it expecting to make new friends or become a part of a community. However, the fact that Freestyle has such small classes and dedicated teachers really makes it a special place. The ability to collaborate with fellow creatives here is invaluable, and I am extremely grateful for it. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to coming back as a senior and seeing everyone again. Here’s to a great year!