Who am I?
Hello! My name is Mira Tang and I am currently a senior enrolled in both Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy. At Freestyle I am a design-focused student working to improve my graphic design skills and overall media literacy. Outside of school I love to spend time with my friends and family, paint, listen to music, and go to concerts.
Core Values
My core values in life include awareness, creativity, honesty, and friendship. I have found awareness to be massively important in my life because it helps me to stay grounded and understand my environment. It also applies to my art as it allows me to observe the world around me and sharpen my sensitivity to things like detail and emotion. Creativity ties into my life in a similar way, as it lets me come up with new, unique ideas whether that be in my artwork or even daily tasks like schoolwork. Honesty is truly one of the most important values to me because it is so rare to find people who can be fully honest with you, and who you can fully be honest with as well. I also think it’s important to be honest with yourself as it is the first step to achieving personal growth. Lastly, my friendships are some of the most significant people in my life, and I would not be the person I am today without their constant support, encouragement, and positive presence.
For my core values video, I chose colors and fonts that were both aesthetically pleasing to me and what I felt like fit the words they were being used for. The fonts for each value word are different because I wanted to show that each value is different and important to me individually. The colors of each of the words are slightly different but similar enough to still demonstrate unity and make the composition appear cohesive. “Originality” and “Individuality” have similar fonts because to me, they are similar concepts. Values like “Honesty” and “Awareness” have very different fonts both compared to each other and to all the other words because they are quite different from the other concepts shown.
The music I chose is not too overpowering and dramatic but still has different beats and shifts that signal different transitions in the video. Each animated text – the title text and each core value – is intentionally timed to come onto the screen when there is an identifiable change in the music, whether that be a beat or shift in the general tone. Each word is placed to fill up the frame in an interesting way, with different angles and making sure to keep the somewhat similar fonts further from each other onscreen. I chose each animation preset to specifically match both the font and placement of the values on the screen.
Passions
I am currently passionate about music, nature, and capturing the beauty of nature in my artworks. Music has always been very important to me because it is often how I process things going on in my life and express myself to others. I think that music can be such a beautiful way of connecting with others, as it can bring you closer to people with similar interests and experiences. I am also very passionate about nature as it is so gorgeous and calming, without the influence of people or manmade structures. I often find myself in nature when I need to find a way to relax or destress, and because of this, I like to use it as inspiration in my artistic process. Trying to find a way to capture the essence of nature will always intrigue me, and force me to look closer at things in the real world.
Why am I a Freestyle student?
I chose to become a Freestyle student because I love the idea of having a shared creative outlet with other people who share similar passions as me. While taking art classes in regular school can be fun, Freestyle offers me the opportunity to meet new people and work with them in an environment where creativity and unique ideas are celebrated instead of stamped out. Being with these people for two years and getting to learn things from them, share experiences with them, and get new perspectives is very exciting for me, and I love that we get to create this bond over two shared years together.