Welcome to my showcase page! I’m Nadia Pai, a student at Freestyle and future student at San Jose State University, where I will be majoring in industrial design this fall. My focus at Freestyle is animation, but I am more interested in design now. I’ve always loved art and so grateful Freestyle gave me the experience to hone my skills.
Project 1: Zenith
For this project, I created a short animation in Photoshop, then printed each frame individually. I stuck the stickers around town and photographed them, then recomposited them in After Effects. Though the final product is quite short and simple, I am proud of how it turned out. The part that was important to me was spreading the artwork around, so it would be dispersed. My mom compared it to Banksy, and while I definitely wouldn’t claim to be at his level, I very much appreciated the comparison.
Another inspiration for this project was old rubberhose animations, like some of the original Disney cartoons. I actually find a lot of those creepy, but there is also something sort of charming about their droopiness and fluid movements. The animation for this project was short, since each frame had to be made into a sticker, so I unfortunately didn’t really get a chance to fully render out some of the more rubberhose-y effects I would’ve liked to use in a longer project.
Project 2: Multilayer art project
This was a partner project I worked on with a friend. This was another project that came out exactly how I wanted it to, and I am very proud of it. While it’s not perfect, it came out very close to how it looked in my head, which is an amazing feeling. I did all of the pre-Illustrator sketches myself and worked very hard to perfect them and make clean lines and contours in Illustrator. I am most proud of the beetle, which is cut out of the hill using negative space. That part was kind of like a logic game — I had to figure out which parts to separate and what would be appropriate shapes and sizes so no parts would be too intricate or thin and ruin the laser cutting process. I enjoyed using Illustrator and this project really helped me get a sense for the design workflow, which I also applied to my zenith project later.
I am so proud of the finished product, but I am quite happy with the process videos as well. After Effects was probably the hardest Adobe app for me to learn, so even though these videos are pretty basic, I am proud of myself for sticking with it and at least knowing some basic skills in After Effects, especially using 3D space.
Other works
Reflection
Overall, I have enjoyed my time at Freestyle a lot. I have picked up basic skills in several applications, and these will definitely put me ahead going into my college design program. Coming into Freestyle, I only really had experience with traditional art, so Freestyle has definitely helped me develop my digital communication and 21st-century media skills. Having access to industry-grade apps and equipment was wonderful as well and I am extremely grateful to live somewhere where this is possible.
Thank you so much for reviewing my work and I can’t wait to present to you!