Reflections

Introduction

The first unit of my Senior year in Freestyle Academy was the Reflections Unit. This unit is full of different kinds of work from each of my classes, and ultimately centers around the question: “who am I?” We answer this question in English by writing a Personal Essay, which is an essay explaining our individual answers to that question. In Digital Media, we worked on recording the Personal Essay, Perspective Piece, Pro Tools and Reason song, and created Mandalas using Adobe Illustrator. In Design, we worked on multiple pieces to improve on our skills of digital editing and reviewing principles such as shape, line, balance, and color.

Digital Media Projects

Perspective Piece

The Perspective Piece was a small project for my Digital Media class, where we were told to write about an opinion we had about the world around us and record it. For this piece, I chose to address an issue many people my age face everyday, including myself. This issue is how the popularity of relatable humor in my generation has caused us to become less empathetic and unaware of how people feel around us. After recording my Perspective Piece using Pro Tools, I used Adobe After Effects to add photos and text to add visual interest in the video. I believe this small project helped to answer the question “Who am I?” by expressing my opinion about something people normally do not talk about.

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This is a screenshot of the Pro Tools interface when I recorded my Perspective Piece.

This is a screenshot of the Pro Tools interface when I recorded my Perspective Piece.

This is a screenshot of my Adobe After Effects interface when I created this video.

Screenshot of after effects interface while I was creating the perspective piece.

Pro Tools and Reason Piece

For this project, I created a piece of music using both Pro Tools and Reason to mix both instruments and qualities each application had to offer. When given this assignment, I decided to challenge myself to create a jazz piece by learning basic chord progressions used in jazz. First, I made a drum track using the Boom plugin in Reason before adding the main piano chords in and adjusting the reverb. Then I created saxophone and clarinet tracks using the Xpand!2 plugin in Pro Tools.

This is a screenshot of Reason while I was in the process of creating this piece.

This is a screenshot of Reason while I was in the process of creating this piece.

This is a screenshot of Pro Tools while I was in the process of creating this piece.

This is a screenshot of Pro Tools while I was in the process of creating this piece.

Mandalas

Another project I completed during this section in my Digital Media class was a black and white and colored mandala. The first step in creating these mandalas was making a template in Adobe Illustrator that allowed me to only draw on a slice of the circle, and reflected that portion throughout the rest of the circle. For the black and white mandala I created, I challenged myself to follow a theme by making each illustration in the mandala in a traditional tattoo style, which made it very intricate and detailed in the end. The black and white mandala was very rewarding because once it was completed, my mandala was engraved on a piece of wood, and holding the final product made me realize how much work I put into it.

This is a screenshot of the mandala template used to create the mandalas in Adobe Illustrator.

This is a screenshot of the mandala template used to create the mandalas.

This is a video of the process of creating my black and white mandala.

This is a photo of my completed black and white mandala.

This is a photo of my black and white mandala

My colored mandala was made through the same process of my black and white mandala, the only difference being this mandala includes color and a different theme. The theme I chose for this mandala was nature, which includes different kinds of flowers, insects and leaves.

This is a photo of my colored mandala

Design Pieces

During this section, I created many pieces in my Design class, including taking photographs of everyday objects to create the alphabet, and then using those letters to spell my name and putting it together in Adobe Photoshop. We then created an Aboriginal Dot Painting, where we not only learned how to use acrylic paint, but also improved and added to our knowledge of shape, line, and color. Next, we created collages using pieces of magazine, then scanning that collage and painting the shapes of it using tints, tones, and shades of one color. Finally, we created a digital collage using Adobe Photoshop, and worked on our ability to convey balance in a piece while also improving on our digital editing skills.

Name

This piece consists of photos I took of objects that look like the letters of the alphabet spelled into my name. The first photo is a curved string from a net to make an S, the second photo is of metal rods that make an I, the third is a rack that makes an M, then a doorknob that makes an O, a chair that makes an N, wood that makes an E. After taking these photos, I edited them using Adobe Photoshop before putting them all together to spell my name.

6 photos lined up to spell Simone: the first, a curved string from a net to make an S, metal rods that make an I, a rack that makes an M, doorknob that makes an O, chair that makes an N, wood that makes an E

This is a screenshot of my Adobe Photoshop interface when creating this piece.

screenshot of photoshop interface

Aboriginal Painting

The process of planning the aboriginal painting was difficult, because I needed to remember the different aspects of a traditional Aboriginal painting and I could not make the final painting too detailed. These are photos of the first drafts I created when planning this painting, the first being sketches of different poses I was interested in, and the second draft was my original plan for the painting using sharpies.

Photo of sketches of different poses of barn owl      sharpie plan for aboriginal painting         

This is the Aboriginal Painting that I created using acrylic paint. Creating this piece was especially difficult because this was my first time using acrylic paint, and I often struggled when making the different sized dots throughout the piece. Examples of principles I focused on when creating this piece are line, shape, color, and emphasis.

Click to view my Aboriginal Artist Statement

Aborigional painting of a barn owl surrounded by stars, flying over hills.

Collage

This is my collage that I created using individual cutouts from magazines and combining them in different ways before finally choosing a configuration I liked and gluing it together to create the final piece.

A collage I created using magazine cutouts, depicting many light colors and flowers

Collage Painting

This piece is a second part to the collage, where I traced the different shapes and painted each shape a different tint, tone, or shade of a base color using acrylic paint.

A painting of the previous collage I made using magazine cutouts, each shape a different shade of turquoise.

Digital Collage

This is a digital collage I created using Adobe Photoshop. I started by gathering different images from the internet and arranging them together, and adding and editing a background using filters to bring the piece together. The final idea surrounding this collage is the affect that humans have on the Earth.

A digital collage I made using Adobe Photoshop depicting earth vs humans