Reflections
The first half of Senior year is a time of questioning. Surrounded by old memories and knowing you are in your last year to make new ones leaves oneself pondering about how they got where they are today. With college applications forcing you to summarize who you are, it can be overwhelming to think about. That’s where the reflections unit comes in. It forces you to imbed yourself in each and everything, as well as add new skill to enhance your way of communicating about yourself.
English
Personal Essay
The Personal Essay is a nonfiction piece all about the writer’s experiences and how they shaped who they are. For our assignment we had the option of writing our Common Application essay for college that follows all the 650 word count they have or to create our own piece of writing with a 500-1000 word count as well as being able to change the font or formatting. Regardless of choice, each student used Ethan Sawyer’s College Essay Essentials as a reference text to help us in creating our essay.
The following list if the first assignment we had, where we had to list 20 “essence objects”. These are objects that each have significance to me and an integral part of who I am (in no particular order)
- Jar of my bird’s tail feathers
- My earbuds and their usb-c adapter to connect to my phone
- My copy of the book “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon”
- My families “Cars” DVD
- My green “My Neighbor Totoro” mechanical pencil
- My Biology Honors notebook
- Polpol’s tofu dish
- Drawings of Kermit the Frog I made for Max
- My sketchbook I started in 5th grade and haven’t finnished
- All of my backings I put in my clear phone case so that I can change it whenever I feel like
- My blue Athena Camps hoodie with everyone’s signature from the last week of camp on it
- The pinecone I won with Ishana at a Science Olympiad tournment
- The Wacom drawing tablet I got for my 13th birthday
- Julis’s pastel drawing of an apple
- Some unsalted unbuttered popcorn
- Horsey and Spot
- All the origami cranes I have on my wall, forming a rainbow
- My copy of the magazine that holds the outcome of my documentary project
Brainstorming
We had to do a lot of other brainstorming and exercises from the College Essay Essential’s book. All of which can be viewed here.
Drafting
Ultimately, I decided to change my essay to a D type essay which is a montage essay that doesn’t have to do with the career you intend to pursue. Writing this essay took multiple drafts
The unit was hard for a multiple of reasons. It was hard writing about myself, especially with so much change going on my life, I questioned who I was and what I wanted to do multiple times in the process of writing the essay. It made me second guess if I still was who I thought I was. I also had moments where I was struggling with the topic of my essay and wanted to completely scrap my drafts at some point, but every time I got new feedback, it restored my confidence, not only in what I had, but what my essay could be. Things have constantly changed in my life, but ultimately, one thing that has remained the same is admiration for other people, hence why I stayed with my topic.
Digital Media
Mandala
For our return to Digital Media, we learned about how to create a mandala template in Adobe Illustrator. We used the transformation and clipping mask tool to make templates for an eight slice, ten slice, 12 slice and 16 slice mandala. We were then tasked to create a mandala based on something personal to us. I choose to do one based on my family, so I drew a flower and designated each petal to represent a family member. We had to use line and shape but not value or color, so there was an extra challenge to the Black and White Mandala.
I choose to use the eight slices mandala template for my “Black and White Mandala”. The large petals were crucial in having enough space to fill up the petals with representations of my family. The order goes me, my cousin Max, my older brother Pete, my older sister Julie, my mother, and lastly, my father. We used pen pressure a Wacom Intuos to get different line thicknesses.
Colored Mandala
I challenged myself to make a new mandala for the colored one instead or coloring my Black and White Mandala, because I wanted to push myself. For my colored mandal, I was inspired by my recent studying for Entomology in Science Olympiad. My subject was Lepidoptera (the moth and butterfly family). I wanted to highlight their differences as well as their similarities through the colors and shapes I used.
Both the moths and butterfly components use curved and straight lines, but the moth components use a cool themed color pallet while the butterfly components use a warm color pallet. I showcased both of the light sources in their daily life (the butterflies with the sun and the moths with the moon). Despite their differences they both center around flowers, showing unity despite being so different. This piece heavily utilizes color, a component that was not available in the “Black and White Mandala” project.
Adobe After Effects
You may have been wondering how I made the video of the mandal. Well, the truth is that I learned to make it in Adobe After Effects!
Workspace: The first thing we had to learn in After Effects was how to use the workspace. To do this, we had a project where we had to record revealing the different layers in our mandala, then compile them together in After Effects. Additionally, we added a title sequence, using position keyframes, and music, fading it in and out with volume keyframes. All together, it was very simple because it was similar to the skill we need to learn Premier Pro.
Compositions: The next thing we learned is how to be more complex with position keyframes. We learned about how to create bezier keyframe, control rotation, and control scale. Most important we learned about compositions. Similar to symbols, which I learned about in my Explorations Project (about how to use Adobe Animate), compositions are video sequences that can be put into other compositions as a combined asset. For this project, we focused on making the animation of the flapping of the butterfly in one composition, which we then put into our main composition, where we edited its position, scale, and rotation.
Core Values
To make out Core Values Project, we had to expand on our knowledge of Adobe After Effects by learning to use Adobe Bridge. While starting off how to create letter-based transitions manually though the text animation tool. While interesting, it was pretty limited in the kind of transitions we were able to make without putting a lot of time into making detailed ones. That’s where Adobe Bridge comes in as it is a collection of preset transitions we can import into After Effects. This made animating text a lot faster and easier to understand.
For our actual project, we had to pick 8 core values to display and read out loud. Then have each of them display with a unique animation. Additionally, we timed the transitions to the music, utilizing you video editing skills.
Animation
Unlike, in Animation I, which focuses on 2D physical and digital animation. Animation II focuses on 3D digital animation and modeling.
Maya Modeling
The first thing we learned in Maya is how to create unusual shapes. This was an exersize where we had to match various forms. We had to determine how many sides and divides our starting geometric shape would have to have, then modify the positions of the edges, vertexes, or faces to match the shapes we were given.
In this lesson we learned about the different “weights” of models. Basically, the more faces you have, the more faces the computer has to generate, making forms with a lot of faces “heavy” (like the fire hydrants on the right) while those with less are “light” (like the fire hydrants on the left). Heavier objects will look cleaner and crisper so they tend to be used in projects like movies, while lighter objects are used for applications that can’t use so much computer power, like video games and websites.
Our first big project was to model a table. While I originally had a plan to make a very aesthetically pleasing table with ornate chairs and decorative objects on it, I was having such a great time modeling that I wanted to try modeling things that I liked or are on my own desk. (of course my desk is a lot messier than this, and I don’t sit on a stool)
For our weapon, we imported a reference photo from the internet and were tasked with making a 3D version of it. As can be seen here, I made and axe. Not for any particular reason, but it does aline with my personality as I love trees and axes are essentially their enemy, so of course I would choose the weapon related to trees.
We had total freedom for this project, other than that it had to be a character. I made this guy coming home from dinner with my grandparents where I started craving potatoes. He was supposed to be very potato-like but I think that got lost somewhere in the process, so now he is just a little guy.
ZBrush
ZBrush is a 3D program that is good for creating details and texturing models, either already created or that can be very simply formed.
This was hard. For this project we had to shape a skull from a circle. I had a lot of trouble learning the ZBrush interface and controls, mainly because I was so used to navigating a 3D space using Maya controls. The skull didn’t turn out great, but it defiantly showed how ZBrush is different from Maya, as it creates details and is a good tool for sculpting, rather than building.
I had no idea what I wanted to do for my axe, so just put on things that I loved. I made a pond scene, using the axe head as a canvas to draw whatever I wanted. Then if made an ornate engraving on the smaller parts of it and textured the handle to look like wood.
For modeling our table, there wasn’t many new tools that we used. It was most different in that it was a very large model where we didn’t have to focus on as many details like we did with the weapon.
Of course the first thing I did when adding details to my character is to add a bird. The bird is based on my own bird, Lenny, who would defiantly create an army with himself on every piece of armor. Additionally I added some engravings to the shoulder and knee armor in order to give it a more ornate look
Substance Painter
Substance Painter is an application acquired by Adobe that “paints” 3D models to resemble a certain material. Before importing anything into substance painter, we had to learn about how 3D models are broken up into their net where they are displayed in a 2D plane to be painted on. This is shown on the right of the interface, while the physical 3D object is shown on the left.
I didn’t do anything special when coloring my axe, I just made it like how I thought it would look like in real life. It is actually amazing how simply adding color brings models to life. I had always pictured what the axe would look life, but I never saw it. Substance Painter changed that.
I love my table. It is my pride and joy, and I stuck it in a forest because it doesn’t belong there, so it make the scene feel like a fever dream. I don’t know if I can ever do better than this table or love a 3D model more
Finally, my character is done. I actually gave him the skin of mud instead of a potato like I had originally planed. I really like how shiny he looks in substance painter.
Reflection About Reflections
There was a ton of new stuff that I had to learn during this unit (both about myself and animation programs). I was really shocked by who I turned out to be and what I liked. Sure, I made my core values list and list of essence objects which characterize me, but if you asked me to create the same thing on any given day, the lists would each be different. I guess I didn’t realize how different I can be depending on what I did in the day and what is going on in my life. Also, I didn’t expect to like 3D animation so much. I had basically already decided that I was going to love Animation I and hate Animation II because I thought I would only like 2D animation, but when I made the table for the first time, something that just embodied what I would be as a table, I had so much fun. I also didn’t like using ZBrush as much as I liked using Maya, even though ZBrush is more similar to drawing and designing details. I liked the simplicity of everything in Maya, despite it being colorless and geometric. There is so much about me I have yet to learn, and this was just the start…