I started doing art since 3rd grade in Shanghai. Every Saturday I would go to a two hour class of painting in which I do copies of famous paintings or do still life sketching. I continued this until 9th grade, and there was very little creativity involved. After I came to the United States for high school starting sophomore year, I was able to start expanding more in terms of mediums I could use, and also creativity. I started to create more stylized art, and also did a variety of experimentation in my art. I later decided to come to Parsons for school to study design. And looking at the nature of my major, Design and Technology, I realized that I need more of a mindset of a designer, not an artist. It’s not about expressing what I want anymore, but to actually be able to start seeing the purpose of what I create and what it can be applied to.
The left two art pieces are from first semester. And the one on the right is from Time in the second semester. I mostly love doing 2D graphics with traditional mediums, and I would try to experiment each time I make a new art piece. Thus, all my art pieces through the semesters are very different. What is in unison for them is that I would always start off with pencil outlining to get the basic structures down for what I want to draw, and the more I do it, the more fluent I would get. The basic knowledge I gained on illustrator from drawing class in first semester really helped me in Time where I animated with vector graphics. https://vimeo.com/329680116
Furthermore, as for my writing related classes, there wasn’t a strong connection between what I wrote to what I drew. Although I would say I did write about topics that is linked to my major of Game Design. For my writing class final my topic was about how pushing politically correct agenda in games and integrating their ideology into the basic designs can harm games. Other than that, in this semester, we were linking our seminar essay to our toolkit project in Studio. However, I would say if I had the choice, I wouldn’t link what I wrote to my design. For design projects, I would always try something I haven’t done before, and from the instructions given I would analyze how I can make each aspect better. I usually consider the look and aesthetic to be equally essential to the concept, and I would put in a lot of work to make the final product actually look good. The excitement comes from picturing the result of the final project as well as the process.
My highlights
Drawing Class Final
I started using markers in around 12th grade high school, and it would always be simpler smaller works. This was one of my most experimental drawings I have ever done. It all started because I purchased the wrong paper, which markers and pens can be easily smudged on even after they dry. I discovered this after I laid down the pencil outlines and then traced everything over with a pen. There definitely wasn’t enough time restart as this was a very large scale marker drawing I was going to do. Since the marker ink wouldn’t sink in or mix smoothly with each other, I used a smudge method using tissue. I laid down the lightest tones first as the base, and then started applying the darker inks. I then used a tapping method with the tissues to create this dirtier gradient or messier marks which turned out better than I expected. I adapted to the unexpected trouble I faced and turned the messy nature of the interaction between the ink and paper into a more unique aesthetic. In the end, the professor preferred the effect I got of this than the smoother feel I was originally going for. The most interesting part about this work would just be how I by accident made something more aesthetically unique with the help of adaptation of the situation. Next time, I can experiment more by using materials that are more unexpected to be put together.
Video project:
One of my highlights is my TV Show intro sequence. For the project we had to come up with an original TV Show and make an intro for it. For the project I came with the concept 20 minutes before class started, and I quickly made a storyboard for it. My TV show is about a Soviet spy who got amnesia from an accident when he just stepped foot into the United States, and was then taken in by a suburban American family out of love, and he will try to remember his past and at the same time adapt to the American lifestyle. This was my first ever actual video project, and I wanted to milk the most out, learn the most I can and create my best work. With the very little knowledge I had on editing I still wanted to make the TV show exactly how I had imagined it in my head. I started off by doing research on how to animate which is half of my video. I decided from my research that I want to use vector graphics to do my animation. So I went to illustrator, which I learnt briefly how to use in drawing class, and started drawing out the setting, and also the character for each frame. I then did research on how to actually animate the figure, and after that I transferred the graphics into After Effects where I started animating. This was the most excruciating process, and I had so many challenges to overcome, such as character placement, app crashing, and etc. After that, I started filming the real life scenes, and I went to tool checkout to rent a green screen, which I also needed to learn how to use. I reached out to my friends at SVA with film majors, and they helped me out with the set up. The filming was simple and easy, but the main problem was editing. I had to also learn how to key colours in Premiere, and isolate my figure. On top of that, I had to also learn how to crop the layered footages in the video, as well as how to apply the right colour correction changes. In the end I was able to finish everything. This project alone taught me so many different skills. Parsons first year teachings and courses compared to many other schools is very inferior, and I thought that the best ways to learn is to do my own extensive research to develop the necessary skills. I feel like the visuals are very successful in this work, which was my top priority as I consider the quality of aesthetics is equally or more essential than the concepts. For what I would do differently next time would be just to give myself more time to think of a concept before actually starting.
For the future, I hope that second year will not be too disappointing in being to actually teach useful skills instead of just freely giving students such open projects where they can just do whatever they want with so little technical aspects taught. I want to explore more on digital 3D modeling in my Design and Tech major, and become more familiar with technologies that can be applied to game design.
