– english & digital media –

introduction

The goal of this project was to express ourselves and our opinions through creative art forms such as poetry, music, photography, and animation. We also learned to use a lot of professional software and technology in the process of this project.

Throughout this, I got to learn a lot of new valuable skills that I otherwise would not have been able to. I also really valued the freedom we were given to explore and create. We were able to express ourselves and our beliefs through so many unique and interesting art forms, which was a really great experience!

photo haiku

For this assignment, everyone was assigned a concept statement. Mine was “I am exploring the feeling of surprise through styling hair.” This statement inspired me to create a photo haiku about the feeling of surprise and relief a transmasc person might feel after finally getting a gender affirming haircut, as this is an experience meaningful and familiar to me.

This project was a good challenge and a great experience! It was really nice having a concept statement because it gave us something to go off of, but didn’t restrict our creativity too much. I really valued getting to express ourselves through a combination of poetry, imagery, and sound. This was a super unique project, and I think I learned a lot from it!

free verse poem

After completing the photo haiku assignment, we continued on to a longer form of poetry – free verse poetry. With this assignment, we got to write a free verse poem about pretty much anything. We then edited a photo to go with our poetry, and recorded and edited an audio version to go on top.

Intention Statement

My poem “it’s not greedy to love”  is written in free verse and is about the heteronormativity of our society and how that affects queer people and relationships. The speaker in this poem is a sort of narrator who suggests ideas and describes the events of the poem to the reader. In the first stanza I reference Icarus and use enjambment to connect this reference with the idea of two people, rather than one. This image becomes an extended metaphor throughout the poem representing a queer relationship. I continue in the next two stanzas using words with positive connotations, creating a yearning and hopeful tone to describe their relationship. In the third stanza I further develop the extended metaphor of Icarus when I say that they fell in love with “the sun / of the other.” I chose to lineate and enjamb these lines in this way because it delivers a sort of surprise—the sun they were told to stay away from was not in the sky but in each other. The tone then shifts to a more inquisitive and frustrated tone in the fourth stanza. Here, I use repetition to bring back the metaphor of Icarus, and endstop the second line with a question mark, similar to the first stanza. This creates the question of whether in this case, being ‘greedy’ or ‘selfish’ in the eyes of society is a bad thing. Moving on to explore this question I create a sense of normality around these feelings of love, saying that the “greed is seen as normal.” I then dissociate it from queer relationships in the line after, writing, “when it’s someone else.” In the next stanza, this same idea is repeated, but this time relating back to the extended metaphor of Icarus. Both of these stanzas are used to describe how this sort of love is only accepted when it isn’t queer; in other words, that this sense of ‘normality’ in society is wrong and unjust. The tone then shifts to a more defeated and melancholic tone. In the seventh stanza, I purposely break syntax and start the line with “because,” following it with “they aren’t someone else.” This “because” and the repetition of this idea of being themselves rather than another emphasizes that this heteronormativity is the reason they ‘fell.’ This idea is further demonstrated in the next few stanzas, which describe through smaller metaphors how “their fire,” or their love, was not their downfall—”the sky’s belief” or society’s belief was. Throughout these last few stanzas I also use a lot of sensory details to make this sense of falling and drowning feel more real. I use the phrase “gaping blue depths” and “descending deep blues” to visually describe the sky and the ocean. The consonance of the ‘d,’ ‘b,’ and ‘p’ sounds also create a nice flow. I use tactile imagery in writing “sharp cold,” to bring that feeling to life. The phrase “pleading lungs” is also a synecdoche that represents the feeling of someone drowning. In the last line of the second to last stanza, I juxtapose ‘broken wings’ with ‘gleeful clouds’ to emphasize the idea that society causes this pain and yet celebrates having caused it. In the last line, being extinguished is a metaphor for dying. This creates a sense of finality, which is also reflected in the end-stop. 

This poem was very clearly inspired by the story of Icarus. More specifically though, I remember hearing someone say that “Icarus fell in love with the sun, but he didn’t survive it.” That idea of not surviving certain emotions heavily relates to queer relationships, as many are ridiculed for not being ‘normal.’ I have also heard people say that an AFAB person marrying someone who isn’t a man is ‘selfish’ because you are ‘taking away his future wife and family.’ These sorts of ideas again reminded me of Icarus, and how he was being ‘careless’ or ‘greedy’ in wanting these emotions that he wasn’t ‘supposed’ to have. These connections came together to form this idea of queer people in a relationship being to each other what the sun was to Icarus.

I think this project definitely pushed me to become more comfortable in recording myself. I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to speaking, and recording something that I’ve made is quite nerve-wracking. I think my confidence in this has improved somewhat, and my skills in audio editing have also improved through this project, which has been very valuable.

photoshop blend mode editing

For this assignment, the goal was to learn how to use different blend modes in photoshop. Here, “blend modes” are settings that can be applied to layers to affect the layer below in different ways. Learning what these different layers did was super interesting and definitely a very important photoshop skill!

What do you value about learning about and creatively using Photoshop Blend Modes?

I really valued learning more about how to blend photos together using multiply/screen layers, since I had only used those for digital art before and I didn’t know that was something you could do. It’s definitely a very useful skill!

How do you see yourself using your new Photoshop skills with your creative projects?

That depends on what we’re doing, but learning to better use photoshop will definitely be helpful whenever I need to edit photos for photo blogs, or for other projects! I also got better at using RGB curves and adjusting levels which will be helpful for digital art.

– animation –

So far this year, Animation has definitely been the class I look forward to most in my day. I love art and telling stories, and this class has allowed me to combine both of those things. Throughout all of the projects we’ve done so far, my art skills have also definitely improved. I think the most important thing I’ve learned is how to simplify my work in order to more clearly convey the overall message.

zoetrope

A zoetrope was one of the early ways animation was created. It produces the illusion of motion by spinning a sequence of images inside a cylinder. Our first animation assignment was to create a sequence of images for one of these.

phenakistoscope

Somewhat similar to a zoetrope, a phenakistoscope is a disc of paper divided up into sections. Traditionally, this animation would be spun around and reflected in a mirror, viewed through slits in the paper. However, for ease of viewing, we instead took a photo of our finished phenakistoscope and animated it in photoshop to give the illusion of motion.

flipbooks

Following these shorter animations, we moved on to create longer ones. If you don’t know what a flipbook is, it’s essentially a little book of paper. Each page is a frame of animation, and when flipping through the whole thing, it appears as if what’s drawn on the pages is animated. We made two flipbooks, one 90 frames and the other 70 frames.

The first flipbook we made was meant to tell a (very) short story. I chose to depict a night-time scene of a witch picking a dandelion and blowing the seeds away. The seeds then turn into butterflies, which turn into stars in the night sky and disappear. This flipbook was a challenge to make, since I think I made parts of it much too complicated and coloring in the sky black in every frame was a lot of work.

The second flipbook was much more simple, and also more collaborative. Everyone chose a shape, and over 70 frames we animated our shape morphing into the shape of the person next to us. These videos were then all combined to make one long animation!

After completing both of these flipbooks, we digitalized them to make them easier to view properly. We used stop-motion animation software to take a photo of every frame and turn it into a video. Below are the digitalized flipbooks!

Overall, this assignment was a lot of fun and I definitely learned a lot, especially from the first flipbook!

stop-motion: paper cutout

For this assignment, we told a short story through stop-motion animation made with cut paper shapes. It was a challenge to think of a concept for this that I could re-use paper for, as many things would require different shapes for each frame. In the end, I decided to animate a girl pouring and drinking tea. It was really fun to design and animate this!

stop-motion: object

After the paper cutout stop-motion, we did another similar project using objects. I chose to use clay to animate, since I like how flexible it is. This made shooting many frames fairly easy. I ended up making a little Marceline with her bass, and animated her playing it.

That’s it for this semester. I had a lot of fun and learned a ton throughout all of these different projects! I can’t wait for next semester. :]