A simple animated idea I had a while back that ended up turning out very well. There are some slight inconsistencies with the line work, but it otherwise looks very smooth and fluid, making it a good loop for my intro video, where I explain what my channel is all about. I paired it to a song I created called “Fives,” which is a simple synth song I created using several 5 note patterns. Drawn and animated with Firealpaca.
While I’ve done a lot of work with music before, this was the first time fully writing out songs for ukulele, and one of the few instances where I write words to my music too. I originally just wanted to make one song, Buried in the Sand, but after the positive response I receive when performing it at a Cru meeting (I went with a friend from my summer job at an escape room), I decided to make a full album, and boy am I glad that I did.
The whole album is an exploratory work that uses the metaphor of being stranded on an island to represent my current state of mind, at least at the time of writing these songs. I was optimistic at the start of my voyage into adulthood, but quickly realized I was largely unprepared for what was in store. The latter half of the album goes deep with the emotions I choose to express, all being present at one point or another in my life. As is with most of my other work, the darker parts of my life and conscious are where inspiration strikes the hardest, but I do have a positive upturn at the very end, as I had accepted this new life of mine, holding out hope for my future.
I was able to complete the entire album in just over two months this summer, while staying at my grandparents’ shore house in Ocean City for my work. Between spending so much time with my grandparents, having a blast at my escape room job, and writing this album, I could say it was one of the best summer vacations I’ve had. Since I pieced together everything really quickly though, I realized that there were some issues with some of the recordings, so I hope to re-record them after completing my audio production class, having learned a lot more about taking quality recordings.
Full track list:
The only photography class I’ve taken was taught in black and white, so that is what I am most familiar with. That’s definitely not a bad thing though, because I’ve gotten really good at it. I particularly enjoy using the lack of color to put emphasis on other design features of each photo, such as the geometry and framing, which is the main variable in this set. I had gone out with my friend Sydney to capture some, since she is taking the class this term and I wanted to explore the limits of contrast with her. Despite the melancholic demeanor of these few, we had a good time.
That being said, the theming behind this little collection is based on some thoughts that pass through my head at times, like weary travelers looking for a place to stay for a while. I take them in and turn them into something beautiful. It’s an interesting double standard, how most of the joy in my life comes from my creative outlets, photography included, yet my main inspiration is rooted in despair. Perhaps it’s the thought that my free-flowing ambitions aren’t enough on their own, as a career. “Visions Imprisoned,” I feel, best captures this emotion, for my will to create will need to be shelled up into the inflexible foundation of societal worth, an artistic eye peering through metal bars.
Enjoy.
One of my favorite things about photography is the use of lighting and color to give a whole new meaning to a subject. The geometry and makeup of a subject matter has its own allure, in the sense of choosing what angle you want to snap the shot at, making them more visually interesting, but the entire mood of a piece can shift based on the color and brightness of what you’re seeing. Though in part because I have not yet experimented with the brighter options that my Cannon has to offer, I find it much more intriguing to explore the power of darkness in my photos. Sadness and fear, though often seen negatively in our modern world, are often a lot more fun to experiment with in the art world for just how raw it can get. For this collection of photos in particular, I used a low ISO and deep shadows to capture elements of the building I live in, along with an extended metaphor of a building being comparable to a living body, to create an incredibly ominous and foreboding experience through each capture.
Enjoy.
As one of my most in depth and successful projects at Drexel so far, Dine With Dragons was an app that I designed as a Drexel centric payment app that would allow students to pay for meals together without having to divvy up costs after the fact. It is not a fully functional app, but it has been outlined and prototyped with Figma, displaying comprehensive details on the inner workings and an interaction demonstration fully animated in Adobe After Effects. This was my final project for my Interaction Design class, and perhaps I can fully realize it in the years to come at Drexel.
My initial inspiration / example service to work from was Venmo, and I had to pick it apart to isolate a singular task flow that a person would go through when using it. The only problem was that I hadn’t ever used Venmo before starting this project, only knowing that it was specifically used for paying other people, and I ended up missing some steps in the task flow. As a result, my own app design had to be built more off of my own ingenuity, imagining how it would have to function as a legitimate product, and there ended up being more steps than necessary. However, for the main stand-out function of the app, allowing multiple people to join in on a single transaction, it panned out very smoothly in the end
Where my creative ability really took flight was in the animation process. Seeing my ideas all come together in a realistic in-app experience gave me so much more confidence in the structure I had built. Everything happens so quickly and smoothly that it could very well work as a real application, and that gives me the motivation to pursue this further in the future. Not all of my animation ideas could be realized, such as a more realist coin drop animation, but it still looks polished and functional. For my first time using After Effects too, I’m incredibly proud of the end result, and have been working more with the program to fine tune my skills.
For a closer look, download the final presentation here.
For my final project in my Maker Workshop class, I decided to make a music box since I know a bit about composing music. The end result is displayed above, operating with a hand crank to control the dancer and a push-button system for the music and the lights. It plays three different songs that I wrote, Kitten Waltz, Skate Away, and Melody Meadow, in that respective order.
I had hoped that I could have a stepper motor operate at the same time so I would not need to manually spin the dancer with a cardboard gear system, but the codes I found would not properly mesh together and my instructors were incapable of figuring it out either. The RGB bulb was also giving me problems when I tried to install it on the outside of the box with conductive tape, causing my D Cell battery to malfunction. However, I was saved when one of my classmates told me that their portable phone charger worked to power the Arduino Board, so I used my own as a replacement battery. To not risk damaging the charger, I decided to use an alternate method of shining the bulb on the dancer: keeping it on the breadboard inside, but cutting a hole in the top that the light would shine through to bounce off a tinfoil mirror.
The assignment for my Design for Media II class was to take an image and trace over it using vector lines in Adobe Illustrator, grayscale only. It was originally intended to use a film still, but since I haven’t seen many movies lately, I showed my sample image to my professor and he okayed it. The shot itself was taken for my photography class too, and I found it to be interesting compositionally, with the three foreground poles segmenting the image into thirds. I put the most detail in contrast in the foreground and reduced them both for the mid ground and background components.
Tracing the details of the vehicle was rather time consuming, so my solution was to give a rough outline of an individual car with some basic shading and copy and paste it three times to fit with the melancholy theme. Many of the background details are omitted as well, helping to give that sort of flat and faceless feel to the building.
For the record, this project was done in a group of four, so I cannot take credit for everything. The other three members of my group were Preeti Shenoy Lianna Wang, and Kara Butler. The reason why I am including it in my own portfolio is because I came up with a lot of the ideas to add onto the final product.
Unlike the Gryphon Glove project, we were tasked with actually designing a product that would solve a problem that we would need to research. We had a lot of ideas from the get go, but our professor reminded us not to jump too far ahead too early to make sure we could refine it enough. Right away, we decided on creating a device to give college students with ADHD or trouble focusing a means of dealing with procrastination. Our team evenly split up the research and I was responsible for the neuroscience perspective on ADHD and potential causes. Then, we had to come up with 20 design ideas as a group, so we split it up evenly amongst the four of us. Many of ideas were very similar, and the idea we decided to go through with would be a little helper friend that would help you create and maintain schedules while giving encouragement towards your accomplishments.
Surprisingly close to the end of the project, however, I had thought of a lot of ideas that would make the design of our Study Buddy more effective. I remembered that my step mom has ADHD and that she has an emotional support dog that counts as a service animal. What’s a better buddy than a puppy? We had already thought of the schedule creation ideas that would be built into the device and its mobile app counterpart, but we quickly found a way to incorporate the dog aesthetic into the device. While the initial device would work on suggesting work times and giving reminders, the Study Pup and the Study Pup app would do all that AND motivate the user to adhere to their plans by directly connecting it to the dog theme. By completing your work on time, you can earn virtual credits to buy digital treats and toys for the dog on the app, similar to a Tamagotchi. Meanwhile, the physical robot dog would interact with the user, listening to what items they need to add to your schedule, and because it looks a little cartoony, it’s a talking dog that can give advice and reminders back to the user.
The most effective idea of mine, I believe, was to have the dog be powered by the user’s phone, which they would need to place inside a wireless charger “bed” that the puppy would sit in, covering up the phone and preventing it from being used while they are working. This cuts out a major distraction that has afflicted many students’ attention spans, not just those with ADHD. Certainly if this were a real product, there would be a manual override in case you needed to use your phone in an emergency call. Otherwise, with this product, people could develop better study habits and have fun doing so too, by taking care of their own little helper friend at the same time.
The topic of this project revolves around taking inspiration from a mythical creature and designing an existing product that incorporates that theme. My assigned product was a walkie talkie. Initially I was unsure about what kind of creature I would use, (mainly because I was fixated on the idea of incorporating the entire creature in rather than subtle hints) but I decided to go with a gryphon for my original idea of calling it “The Walkie Squawkie.” I didn’t have much more than that, and my base ideas were quite bland at the start, being essentially a walkie talkie with the head of a gryphon on it. Our professor had warned us about getting attached to our first ideas because it might deter us from more innovations, and it’s a good thing I listened to her advice.
After doing research about the creature and the history of the walkie talkie, we were told to come up with 50 ideation sketches for the final product. Getting to 50 was a daunting task as I was running out at around 30, but the last couple were completed by finding different variations of previously fleshed out ideas. The device took a number of different forms that looked nothing like a walkie talkie, which was frankly a good thing, considering it opened up a whole new horizon of ideas. After careful thought, I decided that the falconer glove idea would be the closest incorporation of both the walkie talkie’s portability and the lore of a gryphon.
Since walkie talkies were originally used as portable radios for wartime communication, I related that to carrier pigeons that would send messages across the battlefield. Instead of a pigeon, however, it’s the gryphon that is perched on the glove like a falcon. The little message is the scroll found in its talons. Because it works like a radio, however, the scroll is instead used to display the channel number. Additional inspiration for this combination idea came from my trip to the Renaissance Faire where I saw a falconer, and I thought a gryphon would fit right into the medieval theme. Gryphons are also known to mate for life, which to me can be converted to a powerful bond between a pet and its owner, and since they are a symbol of power in ancient depictions, it can be used as a metaphor for the power of communication. The gold lacing around the glove comes from the creature’s affinity for gold, and it makes for a rustic design that makes it cool to wear at any medieval themed event.
Paul's Portfolio 