Our Classroom Journey

This semester, students in my Intro to Multimedia Applications course developed impressive skills for crafting immersive digital stories. Working in creative pairs, they designed richly-detailed worlds bringing scripts to life through coding, audio, animation, and user interactivity.

The Interactive Story project challenged students to blend technical foundations with imaginative narrative elements across at least two scenes. Evaluating story structure, logic, timing, and user flow yielded insights into crafting cohesive experiences. Experimenting with diverse software tools allowed customization catering to their distinctive writing styles.

I’m thoroughly impressed by their artistic expression and programming skills. Most importantly, they had fun collaborating and breathing life into personal visions. This fusion of technology and creativity is a perfect example of our curriculum’s mission.

Symbolism and Struggle Brought to Life Through Animation

My Digital Animation students recently completed projects analyzing Edgar Allen Poe quotes in a deeply personal context. In collaboration with their English class, each student selected a quote exemplifying Poe’s internal battles and ideals. They examined how the passage reflected the author’s lived experiences with hardship and loss.

Leveraging this literary analysis, students created animations transforming quotes into rich visual metaphors with customized characters. Their captivating films provided windows into Poe’s psyche using setting, symbols, narration and movement to share his perspective. Students made connections between textual meaning and Poe’s desire for love, mental refuge from hardship, or reconciling past trauma.

This undertaking strengthened critical interpretation skills while challenging students to manifest abstract concepts through symbolic digital media. Their creativity and empathy shone as they brought color, sound and motion to Poe’s resonant words. I’m so proud of their success making personal connections between textual art and the complexities of human experience.

Additional Animated Projects

Luke, an Advanced Technologies Academy sophomore, created this animated project during the Digital Animation course this semester.

Samuel created a few animated logos as he learned more about the software, Adobe After Effects and DaVinci Resolve.

Dustin took on the challenge of learning how to produce Cinemagraphs. A cinemagraph is a still photograph in which a minor and repeated movement occurs.