{"id":22,"date":"2024-10-15T21:56:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T21:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~BlankiF\/?page_id=22"},"modified":"2025-11-20T02:12:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T02:12:28","slug":"reflections","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~BlankiF\/reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n

During our first unit as Seniors at Freestyle, we learned how to reflect upon and represent ourselves through a variety of means. We identified our core values so we could provide insight about our unique lived experiences creatively. In Digital Media, we did this through creating personal mandalas which would represent us in some way. In English, we did this by writing a personal essay following the format of the Common App college essay prompt requirements. Finally, in my elective class, Animation, we learned the basics of 3D Animation and moved towards creating our own original characters in various programs such as Autodesk Maya, Zbrush, and Substance Painter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most important thing that I learned throughout exploring the question of \u201cWho am I?\u201d throughout this unit is that at my core, I am a storyteller. While the way that present may change based on my current subject of interest, I always am seeking to understand and find new avenues of people\u2019s lives to interpret and tell. I was both able to see the importance of storytelling to the formation of my identity (Mandala, Personal Essay) but also see how that formed identity then informed the projects I would go on to create (3D Work, Core Values).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art Curation for Personal Museum<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first project we took on our senior year at Freestyle was the Art Curation for Personal Museum project. Similar to the assignment we did last year visiting the SFMOMA, during our annual visit this year we were tasked to take 5 pictures of artworks. 3 of these artworks had to be ones we liked and would add into our own potential museum, while 2 had to be explicitly excluded. My own work as an artist and my own criticism of my artwork influenced my choices about which pieces made my Personal Museum and which pieces didn\u2019t make the cut because I tend to prefer more bright, colorful, abstract and simplistic pieces. I like being able to see my own meaning in work and have various interpretations of the same text instead of having a solid single answer. I also tended to not like more somber pieces, because when it comes to tackling harder themes in works I prefer to have them have a meaning or some sort of happier resolve overall. I also enjoy more experimental pieces that have an actual functional purpose or are trying to push on a pre-existing things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3 Art Pieces I would ADD
to my Personal Museum<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2 Art Pieces I would EXCLUDE from my Personal Museum<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Personal Mandalas<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n

The Personal Mandala project in Digital Media tasked us to design and produce a Mandala (which is a geometric figure often representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist religions) in Adobe Illustrator. The Mandala we made had to represent a core aspect of ourselves. I chose to represent myself by making my mandala based around my original story, which some people may know as being the focus of my explorations project last year. Since the story is such a core aspect of who I am and how I got to Freestyle, it just made sense to base it around that. We learned about reflecting and repeating transformations in Adobe Illustrator and produced a Black and White, Colored, and then engraved version of our Mandala’s. We were also introduced to After Effects which we used to edit a video that revealed the process of creating our Mandalas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The kind of art piece I produced for our Personal Mandala project was a Mandala based on my original story, which holds great importance to me. I used the same story as the basis for my pitch book which was my project during Explorations. I created this piece by using Adobe Illustrator, and I used various techniques such as the clipping mask function, repeating\/reflecting transformations, and pen pressure. I learned how to create various \u201cslice\u201d types of a Mandala and then chose my personal favorite and used reflection\/repetition to have my patterns be mimicked symmetrically in a circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The important activity and value I focused on in my Mandala was the importance of storytelling to me. I chose not to focus more so on aspects of just myself, but of the things I create because the things I create help inform who I am as a person. I use creative media as an escape and way to discover myself, so it made sense to use imagery from the story that helped me most throughout my life in a Mandala meant to represent myself. The mandala is primarily space themed, because my story takes place in space, and key imagery from it (symbols, a shield sigil, aspects of the various character\u2019s designs, etc) all appear. My thoughts on drawing tablets and using pressure sensitive brushes is that I think it is an incredibly valuable tool creatively. Without a drawing tablet, my mandala would\u2019ve turned out less natural and more synthetic looking. Instead of focusing on a clean design, we were focusing on creating a visually beautiful piece of art, so it made sense to learn about a tool that\u2019d help us better achieve that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before this project, I was admittedly a bit rusty not using a screen tablet and\/or ipad for drawing, so using this specific Wacom tablet had a bit of a learning curve. However, I\u2019d say overall I am more confident in using it for my creative work. I am also more confident in various illustrator features (repeating, reflecting, clipping mask, etc) and can see how they can be used for various creative projects I may do in the future. The best part of my black and white mandala to me would be what it represents. It\u2019s essentially a tribute to my primary interest, and for that I feel a lot of love for it. It\u2019s not perfect from a technical standpoint, and it won\u2019t please everyone, but it means something significant to me. It captures a key part of who I am and looking at other people\u2019s versions of their mandala\u2019s helped me clarify and\/or know more about my classmates too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The kind of art piece I produced was a colored version of my black and white mandala. It is different from my black and white mandala because of the obvious addition of color, but also because it does a better job of visually showing certain aspects of my mandala (i.e, the space theming, colors of each of the symbols, etc). My reaction upon seeing the finished colored mandala is that I am proud of the overall color scheme and the emphasis on the theming of the mandala due to the addition of color. I think it came out very nice and is overall very pleasant to look at, and color made the overall mandala much stronger in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My intentions and visual expressions with the color scheme was once again tied to the fact that my mandala was based on my main story I\u2019m working on. Due to it taking place in a space setting, a lot of space imagery and spacey colors ended up in the colored mandala. Additionally, as a fun easter egg, I decided to make the primary color palette of the mandala to be similar to my pitch book slideshow and color scheme. This would both tie into the mandala\u2019s premise itself but also be a fun call back to those who were there for my explorations presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working with color changed my artistic technique and workflow because it allowed me to get a more full picture version of what I wanted for my mandala. While solely doing the line art was fun and nice, I think adding color really made the whole thing come together very nicely. The things that stand out best in my mind about my mandala are mostly the center. I think the white line art change and the galaxy background really look good with the rest of the mandala. Other reflections I have about my colored mandala is that I think in the future I want to create more colored mandalas like this one because not only was it relaxing to draw and then color, it was also fun and helped me explore an important side of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After we’d created our Mandalas (both black and white and colored) we were tasked to use Adobe After Effects to edit together a “Build Reveal” video that’d show us creating our mandalas. We’d slowly reveal each part of our mandala in illustrator to show the behind the scenes process so that people would. have an insight into the creative thinking that goes into the creation of a project like this. We added text, appropriate music, and sped up footage to our video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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