This quarter had been an absolute rollercoaster ride for me. With a bunch of tight schedules and scary deadlines that I had to work hard towards, but I got through it. I’ve already learned so much.
Let’s start with Animation. This was probably one of the hardest classes out of the three of the quarter. We had to watch a lot of videos to learn basic animation techniques while the Freestyle staff worked hard to find a new teacher for us. We started with a lot of ancient animation techniques, like the Phenakistoscope. Which was a circle cut into 12 different frames with slits in between every frame. You would spin the circle in front of a mirror and the results were the movements of the pictures that you drew.We were later introduced to the down-shooter; which we used our DSLR cameras to capture frames into movies, one was called the Direct Techniques Project. Overall, we were taught a lot of the basic of the animation class that will hopefully bring us into bigger and better projects in the coming quarter.
English, with Mr.Greco. This was a whole other look at english classes in general. Mr.Greco’s teaching style has brought the class together and I’ve actually started to enjoy english. We started the year with the poem section. We wrote Haiku’s that carried on to the Digital Media class. Then we did a free-verse poem. Around 10-25 lines of pure imagination with our own concept statement. This class has opened up a whole new creative block in my head I though I never had before.
Lastly, Digital Media, where all of the ideas from the other 2 classes were brought together to learn skills and application that some of us has never seen. We were taught the basics of Photoshop and Premiere Pro. These 2 apps alone opened up new possibilities for photos and film projects in the future, and I’m really excited to use them more. Towards the End, we learned the basics of Pro tools, which also acts with videos. Now we know how to edit audio and add cool sound effects to bring our videos together.
Overall, the skills that we have learned in the past 2 months have been so amazing. It’s only the beginning and I know the classes will only get more interesting filled with creativity and possibilities for future projects.
Poem Photo & Recording
In the Poem Unit, we created a 10-25 line poem that reflected our personal concept statement, or, we created it based on a picture that we took during the MOMA trip. It took a lot of creativity for us to make such well thought out poems. Here it is.
In the Poem section I learned a lot about how to be more creative with my work, especially in writing. Also, I got to practice more with photoshop and got more familiar with it.
Haiku
In the beginning of the school year, we had started the Haiku unit. This Unit we worked in english class to learn about the construction of Haiku’s and created our own. We were given our individual concept statements that we pulled out of a hat. So our haiku was based on that. After our Haiku was written, we had to match it to a photo that supported the concept statement. Then we took on the challenge in Digital media to combine the photo with our voice recording in our first video using Premiere Pro.
In the Haiku unit, I was introduced to the short poem world and were able to create one of my own poems. It actually turned out pretty well. Also, I learned the basics of Premiere Pro and I am excited for what that application has for me in the future.
Elements & Principles of Art
In Digital Media, we were told to create slides with photos that represented each of the Elements & Principles of Art. We used a simple google presentation and created multiple slides with photos off the internet that represented the principle or element.
Animation
In the first quarter, we did plenty of intro to animation projects. Like the , Zoetrope, Exquisite Corpse Video, Flip Book, Direct Techniques, and Phenakistoscope. These projects were simple bought got our creative brains to learn and think better like an animator.
We were given step by step directions for our projects. For example, in the Exquisite Corpse Video, we had to split the long animation into sections. Each animator in the class got to draw about 100 frames for their own section. Then later on, we used down-shooters to piece all the frames together into one big video. Another example would be our flip book, we each were told to create 96 frames or more of a shape that represented a feeling. So I chose joy as my feeling and used a light0-board to see previous frames so it came out smooth. We later used down-shooters again to create it into a video.
Zoetrope Video
Exquisite Corpse Video
Flip Book Video
Direct Techniques
Phenakistoscope Wheels
In the Animation projects I learned a lot about the basics of animation going back to the ancient animation styles of hand-drawn frames. Towards the end of the semester though, we started to draw more digitally and I am very excited to do more character design and animations in the next semester!