Introduction
For the Explorations Project, Freestyle Juniors were asked to identify a subject related to their elective class that expanded on one of the eight 21st Century Skills: visual literacy, technological literacy, creativity, self-direction, high productivity, teaming and collaboration, social and civic responsibility, and risk taking. For my project, I wanted to improve my understanding of motion. Growing up, I’ve always loved drawing, and over the years, I really feel I’ve been able to improve my skills through practice. Going into Freestyle Animation, I thought my skills in drawing would directly translate to immediate skill in animation, but what I didn’t account for was one of the most important elements of animation: motion. I decided to take some advice from my artist uncle, who always told me that to improve my art, I should draw what I see. I combined that with my goal of improving my motion, (visual literacy), and decided to create a rotoscope animation for my project.
Process
For my process, I decided it would be a good idea to start out by looking up tips for rotoscoping and getting inspiration. I found good tutorial videos on youtube, many of which strongly suggested a lower frame rate. I also found a lot of cool rotoscoping music videos on Youtube that I used as inspiration. After finding good references, I selected my video to rotoscope: Red Velvet’s “Be Natural” music video. The video has a lot of really neat dancing and camera angle shifts, so I thought it would be perfect for my first rotoscoping project!
Originally, I thought I’d be able to finish animating over the full 25 sec clip, but rotoscoping took way longer than I anticipated. I wanted to add in some creative elements like color, but I ran out of time. I plan on continuing this project over the summer, so I’ll definitely try to add more by then.
My Final Explorations Project
Overall, even though I wasn’t able to complete all that I originally intended, I’m happy with how my project turned out, and I’m really excited to see how it turns out after I continue it!
I really appreciated working on this project, and I think it really helped improve my skills with motion. Rotoscoping is a super fun technique, and I definitely plan on continuing to use it as I go forward as an artist and animator. I feel a lot more confident in my skills as an animator overall, which I couldn’t be happier about!
Experimental Music Project
For this project, students were tasked to use their newfound skills using Protools virtual instruments to create an experimental song. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’m particularly musically talented, so I wasn’t very confident going into the project. I messed around with different instruments for a while, but I didn’t really end up liking any of what I was making. Eventually I tried a new approach, and started out with a simple drum beat and then build the rest from that.
I think I’m pretty happy with the end result, although I know it’s nothing special, and I think I was able to successfully improve both my digital media skills and my music skills.