Who Am I?

Senior year can get busy. With all of your college application deadlines coming up, maintaining a balance between social life and academic excellence, it’s hard sometimes. As you learn when applying to colleges, you have to consider the question, “Who Am I?” and find a way to give yourself a way to stand out from all the other applicants. As Freestyle students we were asked to make creations based on how we viewed ourselves in the world. Starting with English, we worked on our personal essays to reflect on how we’ve focused on our core values in life, and how each affects how we are as a person. In Digital Media, we created personalized mandalas that include illustrations of things that have significance in our lives. Finally, in Film, we created a reflections film to visualize how as time passes, the things we value in life change, and showed how that’s important to become a better person. Throughout this unit, I have not only enjoyed making all my projects but also was introduced to another side of myself, finding that being perfect isn’t always the solution to living the best life.

In Digital Media we were asked to create a Core Values Video, where we learned how to edit and animate text in Adobe After Effects.

Mandala

In Digital Media we created personalized Mandalas. Using Illustrator, we were introduced to new artistic techniques, by using different brush strokes, colors, and tools to make our mandalas visually appealing. I enjoyed this project because it allowed me to explore Illustrator in a way that I hadn’t before and was still able to have fun expressing my creativity.

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For this project, I decided to keep my B&W mandala but give it a fresh new look with colors. At first, I had struggled to find an overall color palette that I wanted for this piece. Then, I started thinking of which parts of the mandala that I wanted to be untouched from the original. Overall, throughout this whole process, I learned that coordinating your design with colors can take some time, but with the skills and color choices I have made, I believe that I have made a mandala that I personally enjoy very much. It was time-consuming, but all worth it in the end because this mandala showcases the things I love most with a color palette that is simple on the eyes, with more of a minimalist look.

For this project, I decided to keep my B&W mandala but give it a fresh new look with colors. At first, I struggled to find an overall color palette that I wanted for this piece. Then, I started thinking of which parts of the mandala that I wanted to be untouched from the original. Overall, throughout this whole process, I learned that coordinating your design with colors can take some time, but with the skills and color choices I have made, I believe that I have made a mandala that I personally enjoy very much. It was time-consuming, but all worth it in the end because this mandala showcases the things I love most with a color palette that is simple on the eyes, with more of a minimalist look.

For my laser engraved mandala, I decided to have it printed on a piece of bamboo. Since the bamboo has a nice clean surface with natural wood strokes, I chose to print my design on it to see all the small details cut out precisely with the laser. Thanks to the nice weather the day I took this photo, I had no issues lighting my mandala equally. I love how some parts of the mandala are a bit darker than other spots because of the natural wood, giving it dimension for the observer to enjoy. Overall, this project was very fun and relaxing for me. I was creating something that honored who I am, but also had fun drawing all the details and making artistic decisions on how I wanted to lay my artwork out, in the amount of space given for the mandala.

College Personal Essay

In English, we read College Essay Essentials, a book that gave us tools to write our own personal essays. I wrote about dance, and how it has been such a significant aspect of my life. Connecting my core values to my writing, I have learned how to make my writing stronger using the techniques we learned in class, and from the book we read.

Embed the mp3 of essay

Motion Graphics

Using Adobe After Effects, we created Motion Graphic videos in Digital Media, learning how to animate and sync our visuals to the music that is playing with it.

First, we practiced animating text so that it appears in front of our subject, then keyframing them, and finally behind our subject, also animating so that the text is in sync with the music all the way through.

We then learned how to sync the movement of our visuals to the music that was playing, using music that we chose and an image to put as our “album cover”.

Finally, we combined all of our skills learned, including animating text, and the lines we drew using the pen tool, all surrounding an image of our choice. I chose to do my animation based on a picture of my two best friends and put bright colors to emphasize positivity.

After this unit, I now feel comfortable with how I can sync my audio to the visuals without manually doing it. I hope to use these techniques in the future when creating personal videos.

Film Reflections

Reflections Video Essay

Our task for this film was to create an exact 2-minute video showcasing our personalities and values in life. I chose to do my reflections on happiness. What does it mean to be happy? Overtime, I’ve realized that I don’t have to constantly be happy around others to be the best version of myself. Find imperfections in my life has made me a stronger person.

Our first mini assignment was to create a green screen effect video. I decided to do a classic, where a miniature person is walking and there is water in the background about to be spilled onto them. Using the green screen room on our new campus, I combined it with one of my own videos as the background.

Our second mini assignment was to create a 1 minute movie, where we had to switch groups during the pre production, production, and post-production processes. My group was in charge of editing another groups story, and surprisingly I had a lot of fun, even when we didn’t know what the original producers’ vision was.

Our last mini assignment was to create a short film within 1 class period. Having a time crunch, it allowed us to be more productive with our work, and we were able to effectively split time for the overall process. We decided to do a hide and seek film, where I was the chaser, and our setting was our main school campus, Mountain View High School.

All in all, I really enjoyed this unit because it allowed me to discover new personalities for myself, noticing aspects that I haven’t before. Creating productions like these, I hope to find more projects that I can reflect on myself again in the future.