The Reflections Unit asked of students a lot of who we were, and what values we hold— in parallel with the college application essays that we were/are writing during this first half of the year. And, as such, a lot of these projects pulled those ideas out of us, whether that be by listing sets of values that we hold close, to creating short statements to put on Public Service Announcement posters so others could heed our advice. For me, it was frankly pretty weird as a whole. I’m very used to talking about other people, real or fictional, so writing and working on projects so central to myself (and not just my arguments on other people’s issues) was jarring at first. But, it was also fun and interesting to try and process my own thoughts and put them out in different forms.
Mandala
For the Mandala, we used Adobe Illustrator (I used an old edition for this one, CC 2018) and made it duplicate a slice of a circle to create repeating patterns to create a satisfying piece of artwork. For mine, I took a bit of time messing around with what kind of style and such I wanted to use, and settled on making a set like this one- in black and white, then later colored.
With the Mandala project, I was at first very excited with the prospect of making it- I was interested in what I could make, but very quickly ran into the issue of not knowing what to do. The project, unlike many of the others that I’ve done, was very open ended and pretty abstract- many of the examples had themes, but also many were widely abstract and simply looked inexplicably pleasing. In my confusion, I decided to hold myself to two simple guidelines: When in doubt, make a leaf shape, and don’t have empty space. From the leaf style motif, I ended up filling out the circle with dots and other space filling- lines, and it built out a distinct style somewhat similar to Polynesian tattoos, with the closely fit, organic shapes.
Instead of making a brand new mandala for the colored side, I decided to recolor my black and white one- I was more so interested in seeing how I could change how it was transmitted, and I also wanted to color it in a way more aligned with my thought process in creating it. In my head, the blue dots and shapes are like water, the green is for the leaves, and the purple reminds me of floating flowers- thus turning an originally aggressively high-contrast piece into a much more calm pond thanks to the lower saturation in the colors… at least, that’s what it translates to for me.
This I Believe
This essay, based on the NPR series “This I Believe,” is very aptly named- it’s writing that prompts you to explain what you believe in. For me, I had a hard time writing about this, because I was pretty sure of what I wanted to write about,. but it was a very abstract statement. It’s essentially, if I can sum it up briefly, my belief that everything will work out in the end. But beyond the writing part, we also had to do a video- which I found exceedingly hard for me. Video editing ended up being pretty tough, as simple moves with images were hard to make look good and come up with, especially with such an intangible and conceptual topic. As such, I struggled in using Adobe After Effects to come up with a product that I find to be kind of sub-par, but it’s certainly a start. It makes me want to continue using After Effects and become more comfortable with it, considering how formidable a beast it seems to be now.
Unfortunately, I have no image of the original After Effects interface. I believe I deleted the file after exporting and checking the MP4, as I was feeling very accomplished at the time.
Public Service Announcement
“Because, why not?” is a very pedestrian statement, which is often used ironically or sarcastically; but I feel as though it’s a question worth asking more often. This was supposed to be linked with our Common Application essay, which I hadn’t really touched at the time, but I knew that this sort of thinking was going to be an important part for some of that. The piece itself depicts a person coming down from a parachute jump. I wanted to, with the words and the daring nature behind the act of jumping off a plane, challenge the viewer to step out of their comfort zone and do something different- whether it be applying to an intimidating job or trying a weird flavor of ice cream. It is meant to simply be a light push to venture out into the little things.
I created this in Adobe Illustrator CC 2018, and (as per usual) used a lot of pen tool. For the main parachuter, I decided to freehand the general ideas with the brush, so I could get the more abnormal shapes like the backpack done to my liking. I also used the pen tool without handles (thus not creating curves) to make the limbs, and paying careful attention to the joints and length of segments- because people’s limbs tend to be the same sizes on either side. I also wanted to add a small touch, with a magazine border around the edge- by creating that border, I was able to subtly add a bit more depth and show more of the parachuter breaking out of some kind of norm. At least, that’s what it was meant to do or suggest.
