Fluent in the arts

Pages 6-7 | Features

Fluent in the arts

Gables students share how they found ways to express themselves through different art forms over the summer

BY ALYSSA DOPICO, STAFF WRITER

IT IS SAID THAT ART IS COMING face to face with yourself. For some, this is facing a paint splattered canvas or an intricately drawn sketch. For these two creative Gables students, junior Avani Tembe and freshman Polina Koporova, it is coming face to face with a clothed mannequin or an animated character.

For teenagers, it is exceedingly important that one finds a way to express themselves. Whether this is through a creative, academic, or athletic outlet, Gables students do this well.

Following months of interest in their respective arts, both Tembe and Koporova have cultivated their skills throughout the summer. Tembe attended a fashion program with the Parsons School of Design at the New School in New York and has also used resources provided by Gables through elective classes to learn more about their passion. Koporova, whose interest was sparked only six months ago, has quickly thrown themself into the world of animation and enrolled in a program at Arts for Learning Miami, where they have embarked on several different projects.

As both fashion and animation offer much room for creativity, it is very important to both individuals that they represent their own personal flare.

Tembe and Koporova aspire to embark on careers involving either fashion design or animation. Furthermore, they look forward to making impacts in each field, changing them for the better based on their own observations and challenges.

Avani Tembe

Courtesy of Avani Tembe

Since the age of seven, junior Avani Tembe has always dreamed of starting their own line of affordable and environmentally friendly clothing. Now, their dream has started to become a reality as they learn more about fashion design at Gables. Taking Design, Education and Hospitality Academy Leader Ayleen Monzon’s Principles of Fashion Design Services class has allowed them to learn about patterns and sewing, both imperative to becoming a successful designer.

For Tembe, clothing is an important way to express themself. They find fashion to be a powerful way to channel creativity, and considers how even the simplest outfits can lead to assumptions and interpretations about a person by anyone who looks at them.

Tembe’s design process starts with a silhouette and a croquis — a blank figure to use as a canvas. From there, they add elements inspired by movies, shapes, animals, time eras and even music to get the feel of the design across. Most of their clothing designs tend to look futuristic, unique and androgynous.

“I think of my models as aliens who wear things that haven’t been seen by anyone before,” Tembe said.

One of their favorite projects is a corset made out of recycled materials—used clothes, fabrics and zip ties. Throughout the design of the corset, they saw how easy it is to use household items to create a wearable piece of art.

There are some aspects of the fashion industry that Tembe hopes to change with their work. They believe that the way humans treat the Earth is unethical, and the fashion industry is a massive contributor to the overflowing landfills around the world with the large amounts of waste produced by clothing manufacturers. Making clothes more ecofriendly and affordable is something they aspire to do further in their fashion career.

They also find that clothing is often divided strictly between the gender binaries of male and female, without many options in between. In addition there is a lack of a wide enough range of sizes for all body types. Often, Tembe struggles to find clothes that they like in a petite enough size. Because of this, they work to create inclusive, gender-less clothing that also encompasses many sizes to fit all body types.

“Everyone deserves representation and shouldn’t deserve to struggle to just express themselves,” Tembe said.

For Tembe, the most challenging part of the design process is achieving one hundred percent uniqueness. Because many designers form their ideas from similar origins, Tembe overcomes this problem by avoiding trends, and sticks to more personal sources of inspiration to make their designs their own.

“If you plan on being known for your fashion design, you have to have it be very personal. Your work should be so unique that if you name dropped it, anyone could know it is yours,” Tembe said.

In the future, Tembe hopes to continue learning about fashion design and entrepreneurship in order to eventually own their own fashion label.

Polina Koporova

Courtesy of Polina Koporova

Fascinated by the essence of cartoons, freshman Polina Koporova quickly found that they wanted to learn more about how cartoons were created. For the past six months, they have been interested in making their own animations, culminating in the opportunity of a lifetime. Inspired by their love of cartoons, Koporova took part in an internship at Arts for Learning Miami, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching through the arts. At this internship, they learned how to animate and express their creativity through their art over the summer.

“About half a year ago I realized I wanted to create my own animations and this summer I found the Arts for Learning internship, which enabled me to do that,” Koporova said.

During the six week internship, Koporova mastered a variety of skills that would enable them to create their own animations, such as how to make a character turn around and how to make the character walk.

“The hardest thing to learn was how to work with After Effects, which was the program for editing the animation we used, but in the end I figured it out,” Koporova said.

The process of creating their animations involved designing the characters, thinking of an idea for the story, drawing the individual frames, stitching the project together and adding sound with animation software, patience, dedication and of course, creativity.

Koporova is most proud of their final animation, a three-day long project that resulted in an animated short featuring the character Blink Blink, who they designed.

Blink Blink is drawn short, with lavender hair, a pea green complexion and simple ensemble. In approximately one minute, viewers see Blink Blink faced with the simple problem of not having enough money to buy milk, solving it by getting a job to earn some money, only to find that his efforts were pointless in the end, because the store had closed.

His reaction and emotional response to each turn of events helps viewers understand him as a character and therefore understand what the animator would do in that situation.

Koporova has found that animation is a form of their selfexpression. As they designed and animated their character, Koporova realized that Blink Blink is notably similar to them in terms of how he reacts problems with his emotions and actions.

Throughout the short, Blink Blink goes through several emotional states: relaxed, stressed, sad and a neutral state. To Koporova, Blink Blink reflects who they are, how they think and feel, and what their mood was as they designed the animation. For example, Blink Blink sometimes appears to be sad or lonely to the audience but in reality is content with where he is, a feeling that Koporova often relates to.

“I guess how Blink Blink acts just felt like me,” Koporova said.

Koporova enjoyed animating during the internship enough that they are looking into a career in animation, perhaps as a digital artist or a cartoon animator. For now, they will carry on learning more about animating.

They aim to become better at drawing, more skilled at working with animation softwares and continue to make more animations. Koporova’s advice for anyone at Gables who is interested in animation is to not work on the individual frames for too long because in the end each one is only seen for less than a second.

“Overall, just have fun with your animation,” Koporova said. h

Scan this QR code for more of Polina and Avani’s designs

How to get started: Helpful animation platforms to use

• Procreate: helps to draw the frames and design animation characters.

• Adobe Premiere Pro: helps to add sound to animation videos.

• Adobe After Effects: used to edit the animation efficiently

BLINK BLINK: One frame of Koporova’s animation shows their character, Blink Blink, getting milk at the grocery store.

Courtesy of Polina Koporova