For our first senior project at freestyle we were asked to answer through our projects the question of “Who am I?” This is a deeply personal and complex question. We answered this question through our art: animating a video with our core values in After Effects; writing a personal essay; making a concert poster for our favorite artist; and much more that answers this very important question. All of this be seen below on this page.  

 Art Curation for Personal Museum

When we took a field trip to the SF MOMA  we were tasked with choosing artworks that we liked for our personal Museum. I decided which pieces to take photos of based on my own personal tastes in art, and truly who I am. For this I chose pieces that have more bright colors and abstract forms for my museum.

Freestyle and my other work as an artist has shaped my taste for art into a preference for brighter colors and more interesting geometric forms and materials.

Mandala Project

For our reflections project in digital media we were asked to make a mandala, which is a deeply spiritual practice In Eastern Religions such as Hinduism. We were asked to make them in Adobe Illustrator. The first thing we did in Illustrator was to make a template. We only had to draw a single slice, and Illustrator would just repeat the rest. Once our mandala was finished, it was laser engraved on a material of our choosing. We also made a colored mandala which was printed onto a thick board. The final step of all of this work was to make a video of the progression of a version of our mandala of our choosing.

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My reaction upon seeing my laser engraved mandala was one of awe and  admiration, because my beautifully created mandala had been transformed from just pixels on a screen to a heavy physical thing that I could hold. I chose the tree slice material because it was the one that most piqued my interest. Unlike, for instance, a piece of plastic or 1/8 inch plywood, it is just very cool to have your creation printed on a hefty slice of tree. My reactions to the entire mandala project have been reactions of  interest and enjoyment, especially after I recently finished my mandala build reveal video. Of all of the things I’ve done for this project, I am definitely most proud of the engraved mandala, and the mandala build reveal video with the colored mandala. I really took my time on this video because I wanted to get it absolutely perfect.

The piece of art I produced is different from my black and white mandala because I tried to add color in a meaningful way. The color adds another facet to my already multifaceted mandala design. Truly my intentions with this visual expression and color scheme were to use colors ranging from pastel green to dark blue to try to represent a circle of life. The pastel greens are birth and new beginnings, and the darker blues are symbolic of death and endings. The radial gradient behind it all is also meant to be a symbol of how this circle of life radiates throughout everything.

Working with color changed my artistic workflow because instead of using the brush tool to create new strokes in my flowery mandala I took those strokes and applied color to them. Also, after I applied the color I put in a radial gradient  to make the color pop even more than it already did with the black background. Overall what stands out best in my mind is how I reflected the circle of life in my mandala.

For the final part of the mandala project we were asked to make a time lapse video showing the progression of all the different layers on a chosen version of our mandala. I chose the colored mandala, which was my favorite version. I took the video that we had created of the progression of our mandala layers, and put it into into Adobe After Effects. I added a keyframed intro sequence and put it all to royalty-free music that I selected.

Overall, this project will change how I view other people’s art because I now have a deeper understanding of the often extensive process people go through. Also, what I learned in this project will  tangibly be used to improve my life and my art talent and style.

Core Values

For this project we were asked to make a text animated video in After Effects of our core values where each core value is a different font and animates in in a different way The fun part of this project was definitely choosing the fonts in music and colors here

For my core values video I was asked to make an animated video based on these values. We were tasked with finding core values that mean a lot to us. My core values were love, spontaneity, freedom, enthusiasm, kindness, optimism and creativity. I chose these values after deliberation and introspection on what matters most in my life. On the technical side I used Adobe After Effects to animate the text on the screen. I chose the font and the animation for each word based on how it conveyed feelings towards me. Overall I am very happy with the out come of this project because I put my best effort into this project

English Personal Essay

In English we were tasked with writing a personal essay that was either a freeform personal essay or a personal essay for the Common app. I chose the free-form personal essay  and wrote about my family’s tradition of thrifting, and how it’s an important part of who I am.

Surreal Summer Collage

For our first senior project in design we were asked to make a surrealist collage of what we did over the summer. It was a two-pronged project. First we made a collage with photos that we either took ourselves, or found on the internet. Then we took the photo collage, traced it in Illustrator, and turned it into a vector artwork.

The first version we made for this project was one only made with found images and taken images. I took the photos for the background and the statue subject, and the rest of the photos were found. 

For the second version we took our first version into Illustrator and traced it to make a vector version of our collage. I also decided to use a fun kind of gradient in the background.

Aboriginal Art

For the aboriginal project we were asked to make an interpretation of Australian Aboriginal art made mostly of hand drawn dots. We were also asked to pick an animal and a few symbols from a list of aboriginal symbols to include in our art. You can see below which ones I chose.

When I was making my Aboriginal art, the symbols that I chose were like a coded message for tribe members, such as the symbol for a gathering of people. I chose these symbols because I wanted to incorporate interesting shapes that also hold important meaning to both my project and the aboriginals. I decided to incorporate symbols of people sitting, animal tracks, and a boomerang. I chose these not just because of the symbols themselves, but for the meaning they have to me. I also included my Astrological sign, Libra, because it holds spiritual meaning to me. Also, I have always loved axolotls, so I wanted to make it my featured animal in my artwork. 

We made our art in Photoshop, and once we had chosen our symbols and animal we filled them with dots. Each one was manually hand placed with the hard round brush tool. To  give contrast and depth, I chose to vary dots in size and color and even sometimes stacked different color and size dots on top of each other all. All this work was with the aim to make a beautiful pattern of dots. The Axolotl itself took me an especially long time, because of its incredibly detailed pattern of dots and baked in Libra symbol, and also just the sheer size of the shape. The other symbols took me less time but they were still quite a long effort. I was also inspired by the colors of the Australian outback that the aboriginals would have used. I originally chose a monochromatic yellow palette because I was inspired by the hot sun of the desert and the sand. After I saw that this did not produce enough contrast, making it hard to see the dots and symbols, I decided to change my background color so everything would pop better, but still keeping the tones muted so that it would represent the colors of the native aboriginal lands. 

Concert Poster

For our next project we were asked to make a poster replicating the style of a real musical artist with real dates and other authentic details. The really cool thing about this project is that my class of design seniors are the first ones to do this, because Miss Parkinson decided to make a change from the PSA project at the last minute. As you can see, I chose Steely Dan, which are one of my favorite artists, and are integral to who I am.

Moodboard

The era that Steely Dan and their contemporaries were most prominent in was the 1970’s and the 1980’s. That era was one of massive social change starting in the late 1960s, and continuing through the 1970s.  Examples were the counterculture movement, the protests against the Vietnam war, and the women’s right movement. This affected the music industry significantly, with the emergence of many new genres like hard rock, but also soft rock, jazz fusion, and disco.

In this context, Steely Dan carved out their own niche. Some consider their genre yacht rock, but that is highly contested.  Personally, I feel that it is a jazzy rock. But in a sense it is pointless to arbitrarily assign a genre to their music, because they transcend them and became their own thing. Truly there is no one like them. Their sound is entirely unique, their most recognizable work being their debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill, which has been certified platinum. Rolling Stones magazine listed it as one of the greatest albums of all time.

The process of creating the poster was a long one. First, I had to come up with the basic idea. Based on the assignment prompt and requirements, I started thinking about my band,  and I thought that it would work well to use an image that fit the name of the band.  So I chose a pattern of steel girders that I saw in a stock image and was inspired by. I was also inspired by the “Art of Rock” book, from the SFMOMA exhibit of the same name, to put a gradient in the background of the poster. The sun above the girders was also inspired by the same “Art of Rock” book. All of this was done in Adobe Illustrator, with its many extremely versatile tools. The only thing I would have done differently is to not take so long to come up with the concept I wanted to make. Overall I have learned more about the history of the music I love than I did before.