CHIARALAND

INTRODUCTION

Hello. I am Chiara Z. Neyman, and you are about to experience Freestyle Academy through my eyes. If you don’t already know, Freestyle is a program which helps to develop the artistic interests of juniors and seniors in high school. In addition to the required english and design courses, here are two different tracks available to students: film and web audio. I am a web audio student which is why you find yourself where you are--my project listing page--a website where you can browse the various projects I have completed at Freestyle over the course of my two years of attendance. Each year we have four projects, (one per quarter) each project includes work from every class. For example one project could consist of a website and podcast for web audio, an essay and poem for english, and a photograph and illustration for design. Freestyle is a program dedicated to arts and communication so the goal is to communicate our ideas in different ways for each class using various mediums to facilitate the creation of a cohesive and strong final product which speaks to the audience and gets our ideas out one way or another.

Freestyle is an incredible program but a time one which is very time consuming and intense. To complete projects on time even at a non-impressive level is impressive so to crank out something extraordinary is quite the task. However, at Freestyle Academy, extraordinary is the standard. In my time here, I have learned to use Flash, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Reason, Pro Tools, Dreamweaver, and more.

CHANNEL 1: SELF PORTRAIT

This website is all about me, Chiara, and the person I was Junior year. It includes information about and pictures of the main people in my life then as well as projects such as podcasts and illustrations I created which help convey the person I was to you. The websites showcases photographs I took including a diptych I put together and an illustration I created for design. The site also includes a personal essay, and a selection of some of my favourite websites then.

When I was putting together this website I had no idea what was really possible when composing a piece of internet. I wanted the toy dolls on the side to be huge like you were sorting through a toy box but in the end it turned out the most functional decision was to have small dolls sitting in two vertical rows across on either side of the main content.

I am probably the most proud of this website which is funny because it was the first. I like a lot of things about it but my favourite must be “The Gang.” I had a lot of fun making a tribute to some of the most incredible people I know and it’s cool to look back on those relationships--where they were then, where they are now, how the list might have changed, how everyone on the list has changed… Maybe that’s too personal, but I think a stranger would be interested. These kids are characters.

CHANNEL 2: NARRATIVE

This is the narrative segment of my first year at Freestyle Academy. The purpose of this unit was to express a story through multiple mediums including writing, illustration, photography, and animation. The process began in english, where we were instructed to create stories using five hundred words or less, a “Flash Fiction.” Then we took our stories to design and transformed them into diptychs and illustrations. In web audio we created animatics and animations based on our respective tales.

Over the course of this unit, I learned how to manipulate text using Adobe Illustrator and how to get a picture across in a thousand (plus) words. I also learned how to animate using Flash. Artistically I wanted this website to be kind of backyard spacey. I thought my narrative, Knuckle Touchers was a strange tale which deserved a strange website to back it. Again, I had meant for the graphics to be larger--I like big clean photographs, however I have learned that when designing a functional website, large buttons are not always the best choice.

Not to be negative but this was one of the most frustrating websites for me. I don’t know what happened, but I look at the website and it is pretty disappointing everything feels unfinished and due to an inappropriate scene, my animation didn’t even make it in. At some point I think I just gave up on this unit which is sad but it happens. Sometimes you just drop it and move on.

CHANNEL 3: DOCUMENTARY

This unit my class is exploring the magic of documentary making. The entire unit revolves around a location or concept--I chose to do my documentary on happiness. The pursuit of happiness is not new to the limelight, but I thought that exploring it through a documentary--through interviews and research, I would be opening the door to potential self growth and a unique project about what it means to be happy. Throughout the unit, we made books using In-Design, audio slideshows using Pro Tools, and papers using our little Freestyle Academy minds.

Overall I am pretty satisfied by this website. If you haven’t noticed yet with my other websites, I really enjoy incorporating photographs as graphics and buttons. Originally I wanted all of the mouths to be smiles because my whole project is about happiness but I cut each mouth out of the pages of whatever magazines were laying around my house and I don’t know if you’ve picked up a scrap of media recently but there are many beautiful faces and very few are smiling so my website wound up a little more sultry than I had intended.

CHANNEL 4: EXPERIMENTAL

This is the experimental page of one Chiara Z. Neyman. Here you will find all of the crazy experiments from my Jr. year's end. My main objective this unit was to explore the feeling of curiosity I get when I investigate peoples' hidden personalities. Of course I can never be anyone else's secret self so this is me watching them watch the world--my perception of their perception. Perception inception if you will.

I am pretty proud of this website. It’s one of my favourites. I modeled it after my diary because lame as it sounds and I know it does, my diary is my favourite possession in the world. Yeah you think it’s lame, but you’ve never been in there. You don’t know what it’s like. Anyway this is a wee trip into my brain--here you will find some poetry, a song, and a bunch of other crazy stuff from the very end of my Jr. year at Freestyle Academy.

CHANNEL 5: PROFILE

CHANNEL 6: MUSIC VIDEO

 

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