Introduction

For this project at freestyle, students are able to choose what kind of skills they want to improve and or learn in two weeks with a project of choice. Although It has to relate to the chosen elective each student is in.

For English and Digital Media its.a bit different. In english we explored poetry and eventually used the skills we learned in class to write a poem of our own

For Digital media We created this web page, and a fun music recording production. In where students collaborated in Freestyle music studio to create a music production project

Stop Motion Puppet Design

For My explorations project I wanted to revisit an older project we did an animation which was stop motion puppet design. I wanted to bring one of design to life again. And for this puppet i knew I wanted it to be some kind of monster.

Concept

So I started with concept art for my design. This process took me the least amount of time because I had previous drawings and drafts of this monster. I swiftly moved on to the building process.

Stage one

Building the frame is the number one step when doing stop motion puppet design and the starting point for many sculptures. To begin you start with aluminum armature wire and build it based of your conecpt.

Stage 2

Stage two of the building process is building the frame up.You can various different type materials to this, Polymer clay, air dry clay, Aluminum foil or bandages. For My I decided to go with bandages because of its light weight and its easy use.

Stage 3

Stage 3 of the design process is putting the finalizing touches of the additions you added to the frame, bandages, clay, etc… Additional I wanted to paint the puppet different color from the bandages to I wrapped it in white.

Final production

Usually after stage 3 you can move on to the final production of the puppet. Adding paint final touches, and materials such as fabric and fur.

So With my puppet finalized I took final production shots, this includes an over view of the model, and cool dynamic shots.

Presentations

I presented this project to my fellow juniors Freestyles Film room. I used slides to Create interesting presentations where I covers similar topics that I mentioned previously.

Poetry

For English Explorations we created an original poem, based of the skills and ideas we learned for our workshops in class. Skills like line breaks, and creative brainstorming definitely helped a lot when making my poem.

For my poem ” Change and Boredom” its based of the ideas of what I think poetry is, and escape from the world and boring ideas. A way to change and create something unique.

Change and Boredom

By: Kingston Reloba

Change is when the world stops and thinks.

Poetry is change

We write

We think

We think about how and what we are changing.  How can we make this sound interesting ? 

Some may ask

Changing lines to make them less boring.

Boredom.

Is what keeps the world spinning 

It’s a collective of people on auto pilot 

Staring of into space, 

Or 

Scrolling on your phone, 

wanting something to change 

Something is going to happen.

Poetry is creativity and freedom

From the world.

Music Recording project

For This Assignment in digital media you and other freestyle students collaborate in Freestyle academies Studio, to make a music production. With this project you familiarize yourself with the technology in the studio, and edit and record using protools.

My partners EhrenH and CarterC, and I decided to do a cover song for “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” By the smiths. We choose this song because of me, its one of my favorite songs by the Smiths, and for its simple lyrics and easy to follow melody is why I decided to go with it.

In the booth

In the booth where Carter and I both sang a version Of the song “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”. And Ehren played a tap instrument to the melody of the song.

We complied our takes into a song that has my voice on the left and carters on the right. We also both exported our own individual takes of the song.

Editing

For this project we edited using the music software Protools, we had our backing track which was instrumental version of the song we choose. All of the different tracks that are under voices are takes of our vocals for the song. I only did minor editing adding reverb and panning my voice to the left and carters to the right.

The final production

KingstonR, on left. Carter C on Right.

My version With out CarterC ↓

Collaborative artist statement

This project helped us not only improve our ability to manage and grow our Pro Tools skills, but also our music production skills in general. Creating the cover taught us a major part of the crucial process of creating music, and displays a great improvement in our skill capabilities in music creation in comparison to the Parody project. Our inspiration mostly came from Kingston, who has been a lifelong fan of The Smiths for their melodies and singing style. We are most proud of how we were able to merge our singing into the backtrack to make it sound natural and professional.

Reflection

The Explorations project at Freestyle academy has by far been my favorite and most passionate project I’ve had the opportunity to do.

I’ve gained so many different skills from the project. From using what I learned from my first puppet, and using that to make something Im proud of is why I’m truly grateful for explorations. Explorations Gives you the opportunity to use the skills you’ve accumulated through out your junior year of freestyle and use them to create a project you got to choose!!!!

Throwing in very fun projects like poems and music recording, is honestly the cherry on top to ending the year with a blast. Overall explorations is project I had the most creative freedom in doing while at my time at Freestyle.