Project 1: Self-Portrait:
My first site is my self portrait website, where we were told to describe ourselves in a single word, which I chose to be a dreamer. The site portrays this with a combination of seemingly irrelevant photos which is shaped into a beach in space. I made this image using some basic photoshop tools such as the pen tool, I took photos and cut them apart putting pieces of each photo together. Within the site, there are many things you will see, most notably my personal essay. The personal essay for me held the essence of the self portrait unit, because it hold what I want to be, and thus what I’d describe myself as. While the others illustrate this as well, I feel like this goes more in depth, and states why I’d like to be carefree. This unit brought me to such a realization, as I have too much anxiety and fear to try anything new. Coming to this realization has allowed me to work towards such a goal in becoming more carefree.
Link to my website
Project Two: The Narrative Unit
For this project, we were asked how well we could tell a story. To prove our skills, we made a handwritten original comic, which can be found by clicking Room 101 in the short story tab, an animatic, or sketched out animation using the comic strips, and the animation itself on the next tab. While the comic was for english, and the other tabs for web audio, this last tab was purely the design portion. Here you can find my illustration and diptych, or two photos which here represent my comic. Each of these pieces worked to tell a story without words, bar the animation and animation. A common misconception I had before this unit was that all comics are funny. This is not the case. A comic is a more causally laid out story than say an essay, however it can easily hold moral equally deep. What I learned in this unit was that my first product is not always my best, as I re-did my comic 3 times only to like the fourth. Additionally, I learned how much more thought it takes to tell a story in such few words. I feel in the end I did reach this goal.
Link to my website
Project Three: Documentary
For me, my hardest and least favorite unit. This all came from a hasty choice in my topic, and thus I suffered and had a more difficult time completing the work for this unit. When asked to create a documentary of a certain interesting place, I chose my temple. I’m not saying it’s uninteresting, as it certainly isn’t, but to me it’s rather dull, even if it is unique. Each unit was very specifically cut out for each piece, in that the book was design related, the paper english related, and the audio slideshow along with the website was web audio related. Conceptually, we wanted to get to the core of what our topic stood for, and mine was equality for all people in our temple. This was shown in four interviews of different people in the temple, such as my rabbi, a convert, a christian, and fully jewish member, all of which preached equality, and felt equal in our temple. This unit brought a realization as to how little I know about my temple, and even me, and atheist can play a part in it. However, from a purely freestyle related stance, what I learned is to bring much more thought into pre-production, such as choosing a topic I’d like, so the products which follow are more passionately completed and displayed.
Link to my website
Project Four: Experimental
Probably my favorite unit for it’s flexibility, this website was by far my greatest conceptually which was proven by my grade, my ability to skillfully help others improve their sites, and the passion as well as time I put into it’s careful creation. My topic for this unit was responsibility, and how I want my parents to let me grow up. As you pan through the tabs from left to right you should find my music, my poetry, illustration, and animation. We were asked what is art for this unit. Anything can be art, so long as it displays emotional meaning, or a certain message within it. For example, my poem cupcakes. This was in my opinion, the best piece of art I’ve created in a while. Visually it may not be stunning, but the heavy emotional attachment held within each word is was makes it so fabulous. Or another example, in my illustration autumn rising, this portrayed the rock, displaying hitting rock bottom, in an angelic way escaping from it’s prison of hands, my parents. In this unit, writing cupcakes gave me the closure I’d needed to get over an emotional stress from before, but this unit really taught me the power of words, and how much each could hold, as well as playing on words. Ultimately, this was my favorite unit for the nostalgia behind creating my music, the hours spent making the animation, thinking of perfect symbols for my poetry: it was hard, but worth it.
Link to my website