My attempt at children’s poetry since I work a lot with children, and wanted to see if I could cater my writing to that audience.

Midnight Woods 

Come my child,

Have you heard the tale of the midnight woods?

Well listen tight you should.

Tis a place no humans are found alive.

Where the magic brims and creatures thrive.

Nightshade, belladonna and hemlock you’ll find here

Of all the plants you should stay clear.

They grow on branches.

They grow on vines. 

They grow out of big black pots at times.

Stirred by the critters in their pointy hats,

Who use the magic of their habitat.

To brew potions.

To cast spells.

To make a home of the place they dwell.

In the woods it is never day,

The monsters that live here prefer it that way.

They stomp and shuffle in the dark.

Breaking branches, leaving marks.

The ground is laced with an icky goop.

It’s thick and blue.

Be careful!

Or it might swallow you.

The woods are covered.

Their world unseen. 

Obscured by a smoke of purple and green.

So my child,

Lend me an ear. 

So you can avoid these woods

Filled with fear. 

Close your eyes.

Repeat after me.

“I am strong.

I am brave.

I have things I fear

and that’s okay.”

Now open your eyes.

Let out a sigh.

The world is scary,

I cannot deny.

One day you might find yourself 

In a frightening place. 

It could be this forest, it could be a cave.

Wherever you find yourself,

There is something to know.

Words to keep with you 

wherever you go. 

You are strong.

You are brave.

You have things you fear 

and that’s okay.

No matter your fears 

big or small.

You are brave enough 

to face them all.

This week I began working on animating the first scene of my project. The scene is primarily composed of establishing shots, so the main movement I needed to create was caused by the wind. My process consists of diving layers into their moving parts: ie. grass 1, shading 1, hair 1, color 1, saving that as a frame, then minimizing the opacity of these layers and drawing a new frame over top. The main difficulties I encountered were trying to create overall cohesive movements throughout this process and managing all the layers I was working on simultaneously. I noticed after edited together all the frames that there were certain layers I forgot to include when saving, which is something I’ll needed to return to fix later. Overall though, I’d say this process works fairly efficiently and I’m excited to continue experimenting with movement in later scenes! My progress so far is embedded below:

 

Here, I have included some figure drawings of my friends and me. In this piece, I try to capture the happy and sad emotions at the same time to show the complexity of emotions that young people experience. The page shows exaggerated human figures and emotions based on the people I observed, which I converted to my own style to make it more unique and interesting. I used different textured brushes to draw them, and each of the figures took around 20 seconds to draw. Most of the time, we are surrounded by happiness, but there are times we are lost in our lives, which emotion is represented by the three figures in the center showing that we are not alone.