Throughout my time at Freestyle I’ve had a large variety of projects and amassed a lot of work. However the two projects from my portfolio that I feel showcase my talents the best are my magazine print advertisement and my Zenith project on costume design and film scoring.

Magazine Print Ad

I chose this project because I think it was my most successful attempt at making something for a target audience. My goal with this was to target an energy drink to 13 year old boys who want to be pro-gamers. I took a lot of inspiration from obnoxious video game and energy drink ads from the 90s that were targeted towards the same audience. By using a color scheme of radioactive greens and purples along with explosions and slime, I was trying to envoke a feeling of extremeness and powerfulness in my audience. The emotions are also frequently felt by 13 year old boys when they win a round of Counter-Strike or League of Legends, so hopefully they’ll associate the rush from drinking gorilla gulp with the feeling of winning.

As someone who is looking to pursue a path in game design, the skill of envoking certain emotions from your audience is a very important when designing a positive gameplay loop. If you get this wrong it could mean the difference between people continuing to play your game and quitting.

I also feel that my artistic and photo-editing chops grew a lot when making this. When you look at my explorations project from junior year, you can really see how much I improved. Both projects target people who play video games, but the print ad is just so much more vibrant and stylized.

Zenith Project

For my final project at freestyle I explored costume design and film scoring for a post-apocalyptic film. I chose a post-apocalyptic setting because it allowed me to get as creative and wild as I wanted with my costumes while still having them grounded in the reality of the setting. To really hammer home the style and feel of the wasteland, most of the pieces were made from old recylced junk. When your trying to survive in a harsh dystopian world, you’re going to use whatever you can find to protect yourself with. Using upcycled materials also reinforces the theme of environmental and visual storytelling in the costumes. Using certain items can

subtly suggest information about the characters. By looking at this character’s CD axe, you can infer where and what he’s been scavenging.

This project really made helped me develop my creative side for how to think outside the box. It forced me to look at everyday items under a new lense to think about how else I could use it that is different from it’s intended use.

I also made a film score to go with my project. It was a mix of spaghetti western, contemporary jazz, and ambient music.

Reflection

When reflecting one my Freestyle experience, the one thing I keep coming back to is all the tools I was given to express myself. In design I was taught how to more effectively use imagery to convey a message while in english I learned how to make the most out of my words and vocabulary. When I first came to Freestyle Academy, I never realized how much I would actually accomplish. If you asked me what a lyrical essay or triptych was, I would’ve said that I didn’t know. But now I’m fairly well versed in a ton of different mediums. Looking back, I can definitely say that Freestyle was the right choice.