This unit was about self-discovery and reflecting upon our past experiences. I asked myself, “Who am I?” as I learned about how I show a different version of myself to different people. Through the projects in our classes, I valued thinking about how my past experiences has led me to be who I am today.
Mandala
In the Mandala project, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator to mirror images into a certain number of slices. I drew objects and symbols that represented me such as eyes and people.
My message for the B&W Mandala was connection, especially between individuals. I was inspired as this is a core value of mine. I grew with this project by learning about the process before you start creating the mandala as well as thinking about what would look good layered in the design. Through this project, I confirmed certain aspects of my characteristics such as being an observant person who visualizes many things. Some struggles I encountered were the brushes being too thick or not drawing what I wanted it to draw. I overcame this by trying all sorts of brushes, so once I knew which brush I wanted to use, I decided to start over fresh. Something I would change would be to add more details into the design so I would zoom in on Illustrator and draw more around the design I have now. Something I’m most proud about this project is how I was subtly able to draw aspects of myself into the design. I will use the ideas I learned on this project in future projects by continuing to incorporate aspects of myself. This project changed the way I appreciate others’ art because every detail, every part of the art conveys a certain thing about the artist.
For the colored Mandala project, I gave my mandala a cold scheme using different tones of blues and purples, while it also incorporates a tense maroon and red throughout. In the center, I used orange to show contrast between my color scheme so the viewer will see it first when they look at my mandala. I used blue and purples to illustrate my main value of connection. The tense red is there to show the difficulties surrounding individuals to do that sometimes. When I came across issues where there was too much space within the mandala, I thickened the strokes by a little and it looked much better.
Motion Graphics
In Digital Media, we learned how to produce Motion Graphics with After Effects.
For this video, we took a song and a picture and created sound waves frequencies to go with our song.
For this video, we created motion graphics using lines.
For this, we learned to edit and display text as you seen in advertisement videos.
I liked being able to produce Motion Graphics including audio syncing because I’m able to experiment artistically and produce something people usually see every day.
Film
In this unit in Film class, we created an exact 2 minute video essay that captured our thought process with a question or thought we often think about.
I put this production together by first recording myself talking on the Tascam audio recorder, then capturing footages that resembled what I was talking about. I shot in my bedroom, outside my house during sunsets, and the freestyle studio. I used lighting to capture what I realized as a result.
I valued being able to reflect upon the answer the question I asked at the beginning of the video essay and experimentally editing with the video essay.
For the Green Screen exercise, we each picked a photo we wanted to green screen and tried to make our subject look like they were really in the environment of the photo.
In the 1 minute films, we got into groups and wrote a film, film it, and edit it, but all a different film. My group wrote the first film shown below. We filmed the second film shown below, and finally edited the third film shown below.
On the second day of class, we got into groups and made a film in one class period.