Reflections Project Introduction
The Reflections Project challenged us to explore the question, “Who am I?” through writing and design. We reflected on our identities and values, then translated those ideas into visual projects using Adobe Illustrator and After Effects. One major part of the project was creating personal mandalas. We designed black-and-white and colored versions, experimented with line, color, and repetition, animated the mandala being built, and displayed our final work.
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My Personal Mandalas
To begin the Mandala Project, I used Adobe Illustrator to create a personal mandala filled with elements representing my identity and experiences. Technically, this was challenging because I experimented with two clipping masks of different sizes, pressure-sensitive brushes, varying line widths, and different stroke textures. It was really satisfying to watch my drawings reflect and multiply across the mandala, especially comparing the 8 and 16 slice masks. Despite restarting a few times and realizing straight lines are surprisingly hard to draw, I’m really proud of how intricate and meaningful my final mandala became.
To answer “Who am I” for this piece, I used Adobe Illustrator and my experience with pressurized pens to create a mandala with many personal elements. At the core is an ox which is my zodiac animal which has always been emphasized in my family and symbolizes my culture. From the ox tree roots are extending to represent my ancestors, and my ‘roots’. I then had it branch into my Chinese last name. This represents identities that were gifted to me by my ancestors. However on the top row there is a book, something that in elementary school helped me find my close friends and was pivotal in me becoming social. This element represents the pivotal moment in my life and abstract lines flowing from it are waiting to be formed by the next chapter of my life. Thus the mandala represents the shaping of my life: those before me who I owe everything to, my own pivotal life moments, and the unknown future waiting to be shaped.
For this project, I created a colored mandala, which was cool to see how color can create depth when it was printed. Instead of relying mostly on line width and patterns, I got to experiment with color, contrast, and opacity. It was super exciting to see how vibrant the colors looked against the black background and how the tiger created a strong juxtaposition to the black and vibrant background I wanted the piece to feel bold and colorful, while keeping the asymmetrical center black and white, utilizing color to make it pop. My intention with the tiger bursting out is to represent breaking through the color, representing noise. Working with color also let me experiment with opacity to add more depth, which was a new technique I enjoyed learning.
To create my mandala build reveal build I used after effects. it was difficult learning how to key frame the text sliding in and out, however rewarding to see the video animated with a photog I took in the background complimenting it.
Technically, this was difficult. I challenged myself to use 2 clipping masks of different sizes for different aspects of my Mandala, which often got confusing and complicated. lines of varying widths. I also utilized Adobe’s wide variety of stroke fonts to experiment with different textured lines. Overall I was able to produce an intricate and deeply meaningful mandala. Overall, I’m really happy with how the tiger turned out and enjoyed being able to utilize color to create contrast and convey meaning.