Merced Union High School District

There were robots, cyborgs and aliens of all different colors roaming around the adjoining conference center rooms at UC Merced on Thursday. The group included one futuristic blue creature designed by scientists to survive underwater and another was a purple colored guardian of a newly discovered planet. The cast of characters were all creations of Atwater and Buhach Colony High School students who teamed up to participate in the Fifth Annual Makeup Metamorphosis Competition.

 

This year’s theme was Futuristic Frequencies, an opportunity for students to share their thoughts on what the future could look like. The CTE event was a collaboration between the two schools with theater, photography, digital arts, graphic arts, traditional art and film students working together in groups to design their characters and then use their skills to design a costume and special effects with makeup for a student model who would then be photographed in locations on campus scouted out by the photography students. Approximately 120 students participated in the Makeup Metamorphosis Competition.

 

The project encourages teamwork, problem-solving, and marketable skills like collaboration and organization. Students were given the futuristic theme at the beginning of the year and groups were able to intensify the work on their project in the past month. 

“We have the kids in teams, again made up of students from multiple disciplines combined from both campuses,” said Buhach Colony Theatre Arts and English Instructor Kimberly Holl. “They come up with what the future would or could look like, we have a lot of sci-fi going on. Then the digital arts students had to come up with the vision boards and logos for the teams, theatre had to prepare costumes and makeup, photography had to do portrait and location photography and film is recording and creating a video for us.”

 

While the finished products looked amazing and creative, the journey wasn’t without twists and turns as students had to problem solve and make adjustments as they went, which is part of the process. “A lot of things didn't work right,” said Atwater High Theatre Arts CTE Instructor Julianne Aguilar. “We ordered a whole bunch of stuff that didn't get here, and so two days ago, the students had to be resourceful. They were gutting their garages, opening up sewing kits and finding stuff they could use.”

 

Siblings Lilly and Gary Hegler of Atwater High were one of those groups who had to scramble at the last minute when they were unable to insert contact lenses for Gary, who was serving as the model for their group. “That was Plan A and we’ll just move on to Plan B and make it work,” Gary said.

 

Their group created the guardian of the planet Tyren. Gary spent hours being sprayed with purple paint. “We discovered further into space and this is the year 2250,” Lilly said. “We’ve discovered aliens and space travel because technology has expanded exponentially and one of those aliens is  right here. He’s the guardian of the planet Tyren.”

 

While Lilly was finishing the paint on her brother, their teammate Sydney Machado was completing some of the other finishing touches.”I think we’ve worked well together and we worked really well to get the design down to what we want it to look like,” Machado said. “It’s an honor to be here and to be able to showcase the skills I’ve learned the last two years. I’m really grateful for this opportunity.”

Just a couple stations over, another group was completing the makeup and costume of their model. It was another brother-sister team from Atwater with Richard and McKenna Davis and their teammate Camila Garduno. “We thought what if scientists had to create a person who could survive under water because of the rising sea levels,” Richard said. “Climate change is a big, huge thing happening right now. We wanted to do something that was a topic right now.”

 

McKenna said they were inspired by Avatar. “I’m ecstatic with our model,” McKenna said. The group was going to take their creature and do some photo shoots near water on campus. 

 

When the projects were completed they were  judged by industry professionals in all aspects of the project so the students received  real-world feedback. While it’s nice if the students continue their path and finds careers in the arts, projects like this can help them prepare for any job. “They are practicing so many marketable skills right now that when they get into a real career, hopefully that collaboration, the planning, the organization, the communication, all those skills, will help them be more successful, Holl said. 

 

While Buhach Colony and Atwater are known as fierce crosstown rivals across the athletic spectrum, when it comes to the arts, they are able to collaborate effectively. The two theatre departments also work together to produce the annual Christmas Adventure at the Bloss Home Museum. “This is one of the few areas really, because we are so competitive across town, we're really collaborative within the art,” Holl said. “So even when we compete against each other, we still love each other.” Aguilar added: “Because we want to see all the art students succeed.”

Shawn Jansen is the MUHSD Program Manager Digital Media. He can be reached at Sjansen@muhsd.org.