This unit was all about discovering who you are. We answered the question “Who Am I?” through multiple different projects in all of our classes at Freestyle. Creating the core values video in Digital Media helped me learn about myself and think about what makes me, me! I made the audio in Adobe Audition and created the video in Adobe After Effects, exporting finally through Adobe Media Encoder. Creating this helped me uncover who I wanted to be moving forward in my life.
My core values: Adventure, Curiosity, Risk, Patience, Creativity, Travel, & Helping Others
Mandala
Our first assignment in digital media for senior year was creating mandalas. Mandalas were the best way to understand us as we really got to show ourselves in this project. I created a mandala project in Adobe Illustrator with 10 slices. I used a clipping mask on one tenth of the mandala and reflected it all around the circle. For my mandala, Wanderlust, I reflected on my curiosity and my love for nature. I used lines in unique ways to create things I enjoy such as the sun (if you can spot it). In the center of my mandala I put a Hawaiian hibiscus flower because that flower brings good memories, with my love of Hawaii and my love of hibiscus tea. man I’m really not a good writer.
Once we created our mandala on Adobe Illustrator, it was time to bring it to the physical world. We were given a choice of what product we wanted (acrylic light, wood block, leather, pizza board, etc.)
Mandala Before and After Slider
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B&W Mandala Artist Statement:
This project really made me appreciate the art of mandalas and value people who create them. I’m really happy with how my mandala turned out. When I was creating it, I really didn’t have faith that it would turn out well, but I kept adding more and more ideas to it and it all worked out. Looking at my mandala that I’ve created, it really confirms that my soul was meant for adventures and really being in touch with the world.
At first, I struggled with finding a theme or ideas to emphasize in my mandala, but my mind was ultimately drawn to things in nature, like the dolphin, starfish, sun, & anchor. These all bring good memories of adventures and times of happiness. The hearts within hearts show that love isn’t just something that is one sided, love should be reciprocated; like the song “Heart to Heart” by Mac DeMarco.
Colored Mandala Artist Statement:
For this project, I used my mandala that I had created previously for the b&w mandala, and I colored each line or segment in a different color. This project was really enjoyable because I love all the bright colors. I changed the background to black to enhance the colors and make them pop. Working on this also enhanced my love for Adobe Illustrator because of how fun and simple it can be.
I screen recorded the process of creating my mandala from Illustrator and edited that video on After Effects. I cropped the recordings up and added royalty free music. Watch me reveal my mandala!
College Personal Essay
Writing the personal essay in English class was an opportunity or me to explore the question of the unit, “Who am I?” We read Ethan Sawyer’s College Essay Essentials book to help guide us through the process. I took some time to recollect memories of my past that brought me to where I am today. I used a montage structure to talk about all the decisions that led me to choose my major. I decided to talk about communication as I was growing up, including in different languages and countries; which loving designing and discovering a deeper passion for it!
Design Class
The reflections unit has been a great experience to incorporate my memories and my beliefs into my artwork. I switched electives at Freestyle Academy from Film to Design this year, and coming in as a first year Senior, it was a little harder to get adjusted to the things that everyone else had been used to for a year. I really value the projects we’ve learned in this class. With every new project, I learn more and more!
Summer Collage
Our first assignment in Design class senior year was to make a collage on Adobe Photoshop of our summer. I love using Photoshop so it was fun to create! Over the summer, I went to the United Kingdom as a freestyle trip. Going in, I didn’t really know anyone, but within a couple days I made a group of lifelong friends. I chose to make my collage of my amazing experiences there, with a man playing the bag pipes in the center as a reminder of Edinburgh, Scotland; my favorite place!
Public Service Announcement
For this assignment, we were to create a PSA about anything of interest to us. We were to come up with a slogan and design something in Adobe Illustrator. I care about recycling and I had heard about it in the news recently so I wanted to make my PSA on the importance of recycling.
Here’s my final PSA! I made the sky gloomy to give the effect that all this plastic waste was damaging out earth. The mountain in the front I made more saturated to give the effect that it’s closer, whereas the mountain in the back I desaturated it to give the photo more of a 3D look.
Artist Statement: I wanted to make my PSA on the importance of recycling. Our world only has so many resources, and simply recycling the things that can be recycled is vital for our environment. I’m hoping everybody sees this and resonates with the message. There are mountains of plastic bottles and crumbled up pieces of paper that were previously just thrown on the street. I placed them into mountains of bottles to show that a single piece of trash you see adds up and creates a pile. The color of the background and the sun is hazy because the lack of recycling is damaging to the environment. I created this piece in Illustrator. I started by drawing one plastic water bottle and coloring it in. I then made copies of them and changed up the color so there’s six colors total. I drew a crumpled up piece of paper and made six colors. I copy and pasted and put them in different angles and sizes to form the shape of the mountain. I saturated the mountain in the front and desaturated the mountain in the back to show the value change and that they are different distances away.
Aboriginal Art
We were inspired by Australian Aboriginal Art, so we created out own in Adobe Photoshop. We included out spirit animal, zodiac sign, and a couple aboriginal signs. I’m not very experienced with Photoshop so it was a little difficult for me to navigate.
Artist Statement: Right in the center of my aboriginal art project is my spirit animal, a turtle. I made the turtle green and the background brown because those are their colors in real life. Along the background, I shaded the brown background with different shades of brown, giving the effect of water movement. In the top left corner, I added a mix of my astrological sign and my zodiac animal. In the center of the crab image, there is the sign of cancer. On the right side of my project, I included two aboriginal art symbols, the bottom one representing a waterhole/campsite, and the one above that representing a woman. I chose the waterhole because cancer is a water sign, and the woman above it symbolically represents a woman sitting at the waterhole. I created this piece using photoshop, essentially drawing a bunch of dots inside more dots, over and over again. It was a fun but time consuming process. I’m not very familiar with Photoshop, so it was pretty difficult navigating or understanding what to do, I often had to ask for help from my peers or the teacher. I was also very sick during a big week or working on this project, so I fell behind. If I could do anything differently, I’d study Photoshop more so I could really understand all that it can do.