Explorations Project

Introduction

In the Explorations Project, students explore a topic of their interest in order to find or expand their passion. Through this project, they develop and improve on a particular skill set within 21st Century Skills.

For my Explorations Project, I decided to write and draw a manga. I have been interested in this area for a while, but have never committed to finishing anything. I was inspired by the manga I read, particular by the artist-writer duo AidaIro. Their work is beautiful — both the art and the writing — and I wanted to emulate that beauty in my own work, even if it’s just a fraction of it.

Another aspect that I challenged myself with in this project is making it wordless. I wanted to tell a story without the use of dialogue, or even sound effects. Through this project, I hoped to improve my skills in visual communication and expressing ideas in unique ways.

Final Product

Note: read from right to left

Process

I started by experimenting with the art style and also the age of the characters. At first, I imagined the vampire as being older, but eventually settled on both characters being young.

Then I did the sketches in Procreate. It took a while to figure out the best layout and which panels should go on which page. After some messing around and some research, I eventually got to a layout that I felt was effective and flowed well.

Before I lined the sketches, I made the panels in Photoshop. Because the gutters (the space between the panels) stays the same, I made layers with margins, and horizontal and vertical gutters. I then moved these layers around and erased the extra lines to the final panels.

After lining all the sketches, I added screentones. Screentones are patterns, usually black and white, that are used to add shading and texture to drawings in place of hatching by hand. I downloaded some sheets off of DeviantArt. To use them, I imported the image to Procreate, then cut around the panels, and then erased the parts I didn’t need. After this step, I was done!

Reflection

Overall, I am very satisfied with the final outcome of my manga. I think it conveys the story pretty well, even without the use of dialogue. It was a great learning experience. It took longer than I thought it would, but all the time I put into it was worth it. I had a lot of fun learning about effective panelling and how to use screentones.

Music Recording

The song that I and Vee L chose to cover for this music recording project was Fight Song by Eve. We chose it because it is by an artist that we both listen to. It also happens to be from the anime Chainsaw Man, although we haven’t watched it.

We wanted to use this project as an opportunity to learn and practice our instruments. I played the vocal part of the song on piano and Vee played the guitar. Before this, I had stopped playing piano regularly for about 5 years, and Vee didn’t even know guitar, yet. After just a little over a month of practice, I think both of us have grown a lot as musicians.

Here is our final production!

Artist Statement:

After about a month of preparation, not only learning the song, but one of us learning the guitar for the first time, we made it happen. But not without the help of the great recording technician, guiding us through the recording process. It was both of our first times in a recording studio. We learned how the sound system works and the best way to record with other musicians. In the beginning, we were stressed, but, in the end, we had more fun than expected. It was a fast and challenging song, but we persevered in spite of these ups and downs. During the first few takes, we were nervous and made lots of mistakes. However, after a couple of deep breaths, we forged onwards and overcame our anxiety. Overall, it was an enlightening experience.

Poem

This year, we were very privileged to have a Poet-in-Residence come in to help us learn about poetry. She introduced me to the idea of poetry as an important form of communication in global issues. Before, I saw poetry as simply an art meant to be enjoyed for the sake of art, but now I see that it can serve a wider purpose, as well. I also learned more about different types of poems and about a diverse variety of poets. The poems that she showed us in class were very inspirational to me.

Here is my Explorations Poem, called “The Cave”:

This poem is about the importance of not rushing through life. Often, we feel pressure to reach success and reach it quickly. Because of this, we can miss the joys of life, or even hurt ourselves in the process of our rush.

Originally, this poem started out as an Ars Poetica, or a poem about poetry. At first, it was about how you have to work to write meaningful poetry, then it became about the pressure to write meaningful poetry you might feel in a classroom, until eventually it expanded to life as a whole.