Showcase

I’m Chris, a senior in high school and someone lucky enough to be in Freestyle for 2 years. I’ve been apart of the FRC robotics team for my entire high school career so that is where I’ve gotten many of my experiences and friends. I decided i needed to widen my horizons and embrace STEAM so applied to freestyle and got to participate in digital media my Junior year, which ended up being the perfect entrance point for me by staying technical, but letting me dip my toes into different arts like animation, and music design. Using this newfound knowledge I switched over to the new animation class for my senior year to experience more of that part of digital arts.


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My lyrical essay “Mold” is about a young girl coming to terms with her sexuality through her school years. From the interviews I learned just how gradual this realization is and how a supporting community can help with this change, but also exacerbate the difference between your bubble and the larger community.

The passage that inspired my photography from my listener lyric was the one quote I used was a powerful quote from the interview I conducted which was “I feel most out of place when I’m pushed against the mold of who I should be.” The main word I took inspiration from was “mold” which made me think about statue, and the other thing was standing out. I looked for LGBTQ art in the area with the plan of having it shown in in a casual blending in I chose the Gay Liberation installation on stanford campus. I ended up being there when someone was sitting down on the bench who looks very different from the stark white statues.

I didn’t use many complex techniques to create the diptych, it was mostly just selections. I used the pen tool to select the bench and the guy sitting down. I mirrored and used these selections to make the right side of the diptych and then added the text in different text boxes to fit into the bench area. Then back on the left side I made the image black and white, but used my selection of the guy to keep him in color. Finally I changed the saturation on the colored guy to make him look “restored” from the rest of the black and white photo.

With “Sieged” I wanted to incorporate my robotics background with my new knowledge of art through a theme that everyone can understand: determination. My more recent projects had been exploring heavier emotions and concepts, so  decided to take a more lighthearted approach to this animation. Other than portraying our 2016 robot as a puppy achieved this by going for a paper craft aesthetic.

I used DragonFrame to make many stop motion parts of the film, and adobe aftereffects for the effects. the opening scene was done “live action” with a green screen to add the background in later. This was my first experience with filming and special effects so it was interesting to figure it out.