Senior Opt Out Projects
I give my seniors the option of proposing their own project idea in place of the main class project.
They must fill out a project proposal form and check in regularly with me.
Senior opt out projects have inspired some of my most successful lesson plans!
Senior Project Proposal Form
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Project Name:
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What materials and software will you use to create this project?
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What skills will you learn or refine by creating this project?
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What artists or art movements will you explore for inspiration?
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What resources will you use to learn how to create your project? Include links.
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Write a paragraph briefly describing your proposed concept:
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Include a few images to help illustrate your idea:
Quamae: Animated Short Film
The interaction of humans, and the assumptions, set forth by age, and societal pressures, play a crucial role in the way we live. This piece expresses the social issue of homelessness, and the juxtaposition between the assumptions of an adult, and how those assumptions don’t exist as a child. The adults are all on the same level, except for the homeless woman bound in place by the weight of unfortunate circumstances. The adults have their own preconceived notions of society and ignore the homeless woman, however the girl, is on the same level as the homeless woman, the little girl has no preconceived notions; just a basic understanding of the world, and sees that a person (regardless of labels) is hurt, and in need of help. The juxtaposition between the adults ignorance, and the curiosity, and compassion from the little girl, culminate into a sound narrative that speaks to how society has shaped our understanding, and created false bias.
From sketchbook, to Adobe Illustrator this project was a smooth ride, the concept came relatively quick and from the start I knew that this would turn into an animation, due to time constraints this final project isn’t an animation, but that will soon be fully realized and entered into my portfolio.
It’s Finished! Finally after a month of struggle and tedious refining, I have completed the animation.
The final movie, was made in flash CS5.5 and CC, using puppets as if it were stop motion. There was a lot of re-working involved in the motions of the characters given that the bone tool didn’t work as planned. I tried to emulate the style of Tim Burton, and given feedback it seems I’ve accomplished that goal. The story being told is that of judgement, and expressing the wrongful assumptions made by the collective societal influence. There is juxtaposition between the adults that walk past the person in need, and the little girl that stays behind to help said person. There were some pit falls when saving the file between two different versions of the same software, but other than a lost save file, everything went smoothly(very slowly) but smoothly. Overall I have a better grasp on the complexity of animating a short film(this was only 30 seconds), and will continue to work on other different animation disciplines.
Elizabeth: Tryptic of K Pop VEctor Portraits
I am portraying my favorite singer in my piece, he has the most beautiful voice so I wanted to make a piece for him. My portrait is unique because of the detail and subject. I spent a large amount of time on his lips and other details that I felt were important to the portrait. I chose this specific subject for my portrait because I use him in a lot of my other art pieces, being my favorite singer I have a bit of a bias towards him. This piece means a lot to me because he is my all time favorite singer and I respect him so much. I plan on printing it on a shirt as well as mounting it in an ornate gold frame because I am so proud of how it turned out. Hopefully you can tell the amount of detail I tried to add to this piece – I used so many different colors to try and make it as realistic as possible. My color choices were pretty accurate because I used the eyedropper tool to take the colors from the original photo. I think the use of the original colors definitely helped make it more realistic than if I had made the colors up. I would like if people took away the sense of devotion from my piece because I spent so much time fine tuning it and adding in details that I thought would help it turn out even better.
I wanted to continue my piece from earlier in the marking period by doing a triptych of my three favorite singers/rappers. I just wanted to dedicate a piece to each of them because they are amazing at what they do and their music is inspiring and makes me happy. Same as before I spent a large amount of time on details such as the shading on his face and the studs on his jacket. I felt that the details set my piece apart from others because most people don’t spend the time on their craftsmanship. I used the eyedropper tool like before to keep the colors accurate to the photo.
I opted out of the rotoscoping project to finish my triptych piece for the Senior Show. This is the third and final piece of my pen tool series and I think he is the best one. I continued with my theme (my favorite singers/rappers). It ties all three piece together along with the media and how they will be presented. I chose to used the eyedropper tool to my advantage again and picked up colors to ensure the realism aspect of my pieces. For the show all three piece will be placed in ornate gold frames in a row. I came in for extra time yet again and I think I used my time well by working in class as well as on my free periods.
Lily: Hand Drawn Animation
Being able to have an opt out project as my final project feels very satisfying. In a way, this feels like I am prepping for college because I am going for Animation in college. This project has taught me a lot of things and I have used reference on how to animate through certain posts on Tumblr. Applying the knowledge that I have read on how to animate, being able to use it in practice taught me how to be patient with animation. I learned how to adjust the frame rate and how certain objects move in realistic time. This can be good practice for those who will go for animation in the future. Animating simple things in the beginning as a warm up and slowly animate more complicated ideas later.
I hope in the future that I will be able to animate action scenes (specifically those really well animated anime fight scenes). My main source of inspiration is the anime My Hero Academia.
With this being my last senior blog post in highschool, I decided that I will try to update on this blog when I am in college and show my work so that kids in highschool will see what will be expected.