Conceptual

Introduction

For our Conceptual Project, we where tasked to use abstract thinking and communication skills to answer the question “How can I use unconventional forms to express myself?” Over the past few months at Freestyle we have gained access to many new ways to create media, whether it be for school or on our own. On this page I’ll show some of what I have learned to create thanks to access to DSLR Cameras, Tascam Audio Recorders, the Adobe Creative Cloud, Avid Pro Tools, WordPress, and of course the Freestyle Academy Teachers.

Haiku

Voice recording of the haiku with added music

As one of our first Freestyle English assignments, we where tasked with writing a haiku based on a random prompt. I was given the prompt of feeling disappointment through winning a game. Being honest, it took me a bit of creative interpretation to come up with this.

This project helped us familiarize ourselves with some of the equipment and software we would be using in Digital Media. We used a handheld recorder to record the lines and used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit it all together. Both of these skills would be elaborated on later to create some of the later projects. Additionally we where given access to a library of sound effects and music we could use for projects like this, though In this particular project, I made the music myself.

Poetry

Click to see/hear poem

Shortly after the Haiku, in English we where tasked with creating our own poem with no assigned prompt. We would also construct a visual and audio segment to go together. In Digital Media we used an audio editing program called Pro Tools to edit the audio together and Photoshop to construct the image. Then we used Adobe Dreamweaver to create HTML code that would show the image and play the audio simultaneously without having to make a video file.

Free verse poem intention statement

Shores I Remember Is about the feeling I get when I think back about the places I have been over my life. When I was younger, my family would take a yearly road trip around the country every summer. We would see plenty of forests, mountain ranges, rivers, towns, and cities, but one of my favorite places we would visit were the coastlines. Something about the soothing sound of the waves and the refreshing air, made me feel calm, even if we were just driving by on a coastal road. While at the time I didn’t much like our road trips, seemingly more and more often these days I find myself nostalgic for them. I miss the days of driving along mountainous roads, riding on bikes with my family on long trails, and not having to worry about anything. I often get short flashbacks to some of the locations I remember most distinctly, especially the ones I have actual pictures of, but because of how we remember information, I don’t know exactly how accurate my memory might be. The middle of the poem is a sort of step back, rather than focusing on my experience, this part is supposed to take a look at how we see the world around us. Many of us have heard the question “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” and while we know the truth scientifically, it to me represents the idea of seeing change in the world without being able to experience it firsthand. The final part of the poem goes back to more point of view focused, and is meant to have a sort of move on in life message. From what I remember of some of the places I’ve been, many of them are very personalized, for instance, town streets with decorations hung by people, or camp sites with colorful tents or dirt covered RV’s. When I see these I want to know more about the people and their adventures that have led them to this place in life, but I know that I can’t. I know that that point in time was probably the only time that our paths would ever cross, and that we all have to be ok with that, because we have to spend time to make our own adventures, our own memories, and our own lives.

A behind the scenes view of some of the audio work I did for this project

While working on this project, we went into greater depth with some of the programs we had used before, as well as using a few new ones. We also worked on each part separately, which let us sort of recreate the poem multiple times, due to the differences in tone and feeling of the photo and the audio.

Elements & Principles of Art

One of our earliest projects in Digital Media was to outline the various principles and elements of art by gathering images that represented them well, including a photograph, one piece of traditional artwork, and one piece of modern artwork.

Elements and Principles of Art Title Page

Animation

I chose Animation as my Freestyle elective because I had some experience with it in the past and wanted to use it more as a creative medium. Thus far my experience in this class has been just as in my other classes, sublime.

Zoetrope Animation

Our first project was to create 2 sets of 12 to 13 frames to be put into a spinning disk to make a short repeating animation. For the black and white frames I drew a dispenser from the game Team Fortress 2, and for the colored frames I drew a perpetually bouncing blue orb that breaks apart and reconfigures.

Black and white Dispenser animation

Colorful orb animation

Phenakistiscope

Our second project was to create a disk with 16 frames that could be spun to show a short animation.

We later used Adobe Photoshop to create a gif with our image so we could easily display the animation.

Flipbook

One of our first larger project was the flipbook animation. We where tasked to create at least 90 frames of animation on a small flipbook.

Paper Cutout Animation

One of our first stop motion projects, we cutout pieces of paper and animated them by moving them slightly for about 90 frames. We later added sound effects to the video to make it feel more alive. I also used a greenscreen to add in a few backgrounds.

Object Animation

One of our final projects as well as one of my favorites, we where tasked to create another 90 frame animation but this time with a three dimensional object.