Seminar Final Post– First-Semester Reflection

First Semester Refelction

Bio:

My name is Cindy Biao and my major is Strategic and Design Management. I have always wanted to study this major because I am interested in both business and fashion, and this major is the perfect combination of these two fields.

Summary:

Throughout the semester, I experienced and completed art through mainly digital and three-dimensional medium. There are some two-dimensional drawings but they are the minorities. The theme of my works mainly evolved with memory and time and these two can be connected tightly. Memory is the representation of the past time and through discovering the knowledge of the time, I can understand the concept of memory even more. Other than creating artwork, an art student should also acquire the ability to academically show their ability as an artist. As a learning artist, I see the need of expressing my idea through different mediums and ways, and academic study is one of them. For example, for the class Seminar, I take this semester, we had to write papers on memory through many aspects. During the process of writing those essays, I discovered the beauty of memory through describing them using different adjectives and verbs. Other than writing papers on memory, we also had the chance to write artist statements and memorial for a favorite artist of ours. From the two projects, I learned the stories of a great artist and was able to relate the artist to myself. The most exciting and also the most challenging part is that I have not experience with digital collage and animation before; so making those things are new experiences for me that allow me to learn lots of new techniques and ways of expressions. But I do think when I was making the book for Time, more research on different book artists might give me more inspirations. And of course, out of all the projects, I did this semester, I have my favorites.

(Collages for Time)

(Screenshot of my animation)

Two Highlights:

One of my favorites was the self-recollection essay we had to write for the seminar. Even though it was a paper assignment, I did not feel tiring or bored because I enjoyed getting my memories back through writing the paper. Moreover, I liked to describe the part of my memory with parallel sentences and adjectives. Writing that paper was a fun experience for me. The other highlight is the animation I did for Time. Before doing that animation, I had zero experience with making film or animation. So making this animation took a lot effort and energy. The process was tedious and tiring but I was happy with my result. From this project, I was able to come up with an idea that can come across the whole video, and I managed to make the transition between each frame smooth.

For the memoir, I did not write an outline like I would do for any other essay. I first just went over my old pictures and reflected on my past to think of any interesting memories that I have. And after I found the memory I want to depict, I just started writing and went with my emotion. For the animation, I first made storyboard to help with my logic. Then I tried with hand drawing and scan them into the computer. The result did not come out well so I started to draw frames on the photoshop. The style for my animation was a simple cartoon style with the combination of unrealistic drawings and realistic sound effect. I think for next time, I can may be even research more sound and draw some actions with more signature sound so that the video can sound more fun and intriguing.

For the memoir, I got to explore the memory that I might able to remember without the paper. I discovered a lot of my childhood pictures. For the animation, I wanted the sound to be one of the focal points, so I searched a lot of sound effect and matched with my videos. I also liked using contrasting colors in my animation to convey a light-hearted and cartoonish film.

I think for my first highlight, the memoir, it represents my impression for the past and my understanding of my my past. And the second project is a representation of my growth at doing animation and it also represents my aesthetic opinion about an animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hic3D2Og-Z8

(Link to my animation)

(one of the pictures from the past) (back in high school)

Conclusion:

I think in the future, I want to pursue the question of what more mediums are there for me to express my ideas and speak my voice in diverse ways. I want to each of my project to inspire the next one and with the previous project, I can be able to learn more in-depth and have more inspiration. Also, I really want to learn more about digital designing in the future because I have not practiced enough with graphic design but I am really interested in that.

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