Introduction
One of the largest and most important units in our time at Freestyle is our two large Narrative units. In our Junior year, we made a simple narrative story, and designs. This year, we created argument essays, learned AfterEffects, and I created , with the help of a group , creating a narrative story. The goal of these projects were to create large engaging and effective story telling moments, and engage an audience.
English
Research Paper
In our English Class we were given the task of writing an argument essay about any topic relevant to a topic that we felt we could write a long essay about as well as a topic we felt passionately about. I spent a lot of time considering different topics, espically nes closer to me, however I elected to go with a topic many around me have felt very passionately about however I had delved less into, which was the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and specifically the U.S involvement. I thought of a question tha wouldnt be nessicarly biased to one side or another, s I myself am aware of my own biased toward the people of Palestine. I also needed to narrow down from he broader cofnlcit and issue to a particular event and question, not just something as broad as palestiane Nation-hod or Jewish persecution. I landed on the conflict in Gaza, and came at an angle of U.S involvement and aid. In the end I crated the question “what extent should the U.S send Humanitarian Aid/Military Aid to Gaza/Israel?
Using Evidence I gathered over the course of the project,, I came to a natural conclusion of decreasing military aid to Israel, whilst Humanitarian aid to gaza should increase.
To support this argument for my Essay I followed the typical structure of an argument essay, giving a beginning, context, evidence, reasoning, and a conclusion. I focused it toward people who could change such policy, and argue and persuade in such a way that would convince them rather than he typical person, such as American standing with the world.
Here is my Essay!
WorldBuilding Treatment/Presentation
For this project we were tasked with using a combination of broad concepts from our Research Project, creative concepts from ourselves, and ideas us as a group (Given the collaborative nature of this project) to create a concept, pitch, treatment, and presentation for English.
I quickly began collaborating with 3 other people in my class, after being assigned to a group together, we quickly came to the general concept of futuristic fantasy, where it would have elements of Fantasy within space. Another idea we quickly came to as once we got a hand on a book of symbolism, we also wanted to make the story center around twins who were disconnected, where they were on opposite sides of an interplanetary conflict. Our group worked again and again to enforce, create, and develop a large world, creating a consistent cannon (And ‘Story Bible) as well as a slideshow to present our project in a pitch format. This ptich format is directly inspired by pitches you would give to CEO’s and businesses for funding, and we wanted to present our project as a show.
This is our collaboration document:
After creating our document and finishing, we presented our presentation in a pitch which is directed to Amazon Studio, which our audience played.
This is our presentation:
Digital Media
In our Digital Media class we practiced a lot of different After Effects concepts, generally getting more practice with the program. I found this super useful as someone who wants to edit videos with After Effects in order to enhance a given project.
Animation
In our Animation class we focused largely on a character we made earlier in the class, and applying them to different Animation techniques, as well as into a narrative story. Overall we learned to create running cycles, key frame animations, motion capture, narrative story telling, and sourcing.
Narrative
In Animation, one of the largest and most significant assignments was our Narrative Animation, which would be a short (1 minute or less ideally) story, an effective narrative, in Animation form, with sound affects, special affects, and solid design/animation work. For our group, given our class was only 3 people large, we all chose to work together to create a single piece. We ran through several different ideas, our biggest difficult was just getting any idea that sounded interesting, at first an idea we had would be similar to our end product however set in prohibition era, where the cat knight (Sir Meatwad) would be looking for a drink.
We then decided, having a Medieval Tavern in the middle of nowhere would be not only more different than a simple cityscape, but also be easier to work with. My character(Little Girl), would be playing the Piano with some money in a hat for tips, Sir Meatwad would walk in drunkly, falling on the Tavern bar, not having any money to give the Bartender (Bunny III), which therefore results in Sir Meatwad trying to get the money from the hat f the Little Girl.
To begin with, we found models of generic objects we needed, coins, hat, piano, an a tavern, which was shockingly easy. We used motion capture to get certain actions we needed, and animated the rest of the work using keyframes. Overall the process was a very long difficult one as it was often tedious and took long times to animate and render.
Here is an example clip from pre-rendering:
One of my largest contributions was in After effects, as I mentioned before we learned a lot about After Effects in Digital Media and we also did so in Animation, as our walk cycle was made in AE. I used After Effects to put scenes together, before and after gaining all final cuts, making and designing the end credits, putting special effects such as the fire and snow, along with adding individual sound affects for different actions, walking, door opening, glass wiping.
Overall I am very satisfied with our products and my contributions to all my classes, but especially within Animation. I really valued the practice on Animation products, along with After Effects, which I had no clue about until this year, where I learned a lot aout it simply by trying it out here. I am really happy with my time working on this project and would like to create more animations in the future featuring the tools we used.