The purpose of this website is to showcase all of the work I did in my second quarter at Freestyle. Included is the flash fiction I wrote for English, the artwork I made for Design, and the audiobook I put together for Digital Media. The flash fiction had to be less than 750 words and couldn't contain any dialogue, but still had to be compelling. The drawing for Design had to be of the main character of my flash fiction, but represented through 3 different animals. The audiobook was created in ProTools and had to contain various SFX sounds in addition to a voice recording of the flash fiction and three pieces of music to accompany it.

Writing this flash fiction was a bit of a challenge for me because I had trouble keeping it concise. The hardest part about this process was keeping it under the 750 word limit and still managing to make it compelling (I hope). It was also difficult to come up with an object in the setting that I chose, but I think I managed to do that as well. The main theme of my story was the importance of time, so I chose the symbolic object to be a watch. The inspiration for this story came from the Netflix show "Orange Is The New Black."

Staying In Line Saves Nine (And Time)

Time was slow in solitary. Mykie watched the hands spin in circles on her wristwatch as she slumped against the peeling wall. Her eyes religiously followed their every movement but paid no attention to the numbers it read. Tick. Tick. If she blinked, the hands would go back up to where they started and she would have to wait for them to come down again, which was time Mykie couldn't afford. Tick. Tick. She'd been there for several years and she had several more to go. The lights in her cell were always on, flickering every few minutes. Sometimes, she'd lay on her bed and stare up at them, but lately she prefered studying the watch her mother gave her. Tick. Tick.

The creaking sound of the metal flap in her door opening drifted into Mykie's ears. She turned her head, watching a hand place a tray of food on the ground. Mykie leaned over to check its contents: old, crusty pasta. She wrinkled her nose as she pushed it away. A wave of panic shot through her as she remembered the watch, but to her relief, and surprise, none of the hands swung backwards again. Tick. Tick. She knew everything comes to an end, and her time in this place would be no exception.

Mykie did not belong in prison, especially not in the security housing units. These cells were built for the screaming, frothing messes who couldn't be allowed near the other inmates. Mykie's voice had never joined the muffled cries of her neighbors, so as far as she was concerned, she was an apple and they were oranges. Unlike them, she found relief in the knowledge that the clock couldn't be killed, and every second was another trudge away from her muddy past. Sometimes, she thought she could almost catch a glimpse of the rainbow of hope behind the clouds. She looked down at her wrist to see how much time before it showed up, but frowned when the hands sat lifelessly. Mykie tapped the surface, blinking profusely. Nothing changed. Angrily, she ripped it off and threw it in the tray.

Time stood still. The watch was no longer there to prove otherwise, and the stubborn lights refused to die, offering little clue as to what time of day it was. Mykie stood up to crawl onto her mattress, running a hand through her dark hair. She squeezed her eyes shut, the unsettling clamor of the inmates surrounding her ears. Her fingers tapped restlessly at her sides on the bed. One, two, three… Mykie counted in her head, relaxing in the warm familiarity of a mindless action to keep her thoughts occupied. Anything to distract her. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty. One, two, three…

Mykie must have counted herself to sleep as when she opened her green eyes again, her breath was stale. Instinctively, she glanced down at her wrist but her eyes shifted back up when she remembered why her mother's watch didn't sit there. Swallowing, Mykie turned her attention towards the door. The pasta, and watch, had been replaced with a slice of bread.

"No," she murmured, the realization of what she'd done catching up to her. I could have had it fixed after I got out. Mykie groaned in devastation, counting the number of years left. She hoped to be transferred out of the security cells soon and move back to the dorms, but she wasn't sure when that would happen, if at all. There was no telling with the security housing units and after what she did to that guard...

Mykie melted onto her back. Her face grew warm and tears pricked at her eyes as the image of a small child with dark hair and green eyes slipped into her mind. I can't give her the watch anymore. Before she knew it, a searing pain flashed through her knuckles and her voice finally rose to join those of the other inmates. The apple had been an orange all along. Her fist and the wall collided again. Mykie let out a sob as sharp and desperate as the screech of a violin as she reached under her pillow, pulling out a photo of her daughter. Quieting instantaneously, she wiped her nose with her sleeve and gingerly touched her bleeding hand as a tear made its way down to the photo. She let out a shaky breath, rubbing at her eyes. If only there was more time. And maybe a distraction until it came.

This design assignment was to pick three traits belonging to the main character in the flash fictions we wrote in English and come up with three animals to represent those traits. After the initial brainstorming, we used Adobe Illustrator to draw the different animal parts and connect them together, as well as place them in front of a background utilizing linear perspective.

The first part of this project involved figuring out the three animals that would make up my character. To do this, I listed out words that describe my character: absent, denying, and defensive. The animal I came up with for "absent" was a snake, because snakes immeadiately leave their eggs after laying them so that they don't end up eating them. This relates to my character because she is also a mother who is not allowed to see her child. For "denying," I chose an oppossum because they are famous for their tendency to play dead, which I think is very similar to denying something. For the word "defensive," I thought of a squid, because when provoked or prompted to defend themselves, they shoot ink out from their tentacles, which I think is a well-known defense mechanism. I thought these animals would be strong visual representations of my character's personality traits.

These photos were taken so that I could draw my character based off of the position my model was in. I picked out what I thought would be the best photos for my character and traced over them in Illustrator.

My flash fiction is about a girl named Mykie who ends up in prison and reminisces on the decisions that led her to that point and the consequences she has to deal with as a result, once her only distraction is gone. It starts off with her staring at a watch, which leads into explanation of the mundane ways in which she spends her time in her solitary cell. A guard brings her a tray of food and in that time, her watch stops. Angrily, she throws it into the tray and counts herself to sleep on her bed. When she wakes up, she looks for her watch, but the tray is gone. Without the ticking watch to distract her, her thoughts shift back to the reasons why she ended up in prison and really thinks about the consequences, including how she won't be able to see her daughter for a long time.

To create this illustration, I first listed three traits that my character possessed (defensive, denying, and absent) and three animals to represent those traits (squid, opossum, and snake, respectively). I then drew an initial sketch to figure out what I wanted the position and posture of my character to have and the way I wanted the background to look. Afterwards, I took pictures of my friend in positions I wanted my character to be in to model it after. I traced photos of animals in order to draw them and then filled them in with my own colors in Adobe Illustrator and I am fairly satisfied with this. I wish I hadn't spent so much time on the squid's tentacles because parts of it are covered up anyways and I wanted to add a tray on the ground, but otherwise I think I did a fairly good job.

Narrative Music

Part of the assignments in Digital Media during the Narrative unit was to create a story theme for our flash fiction, a main character motif, and a climax piece. In order to create them, I used ProTools and the various instruments provided in there. At the very beginning, I mostly experimented with different tunes and played around with various sounds until I found something that fit my flash fiction. For example, I used an SFX sound of a ticking clock to replace the drum beat in the story theme because an object that is very important to the story is a watch, and I mixed a ukulele and electric guitar in the climax to create a tense sound. The biggeset challenge I had with the Narrative music was the character motif. It was hard for me to pin point exctly what my character sounded like, so I decided to keep it short and sweet. Embedded below are the three tracks to my story.

EDM Exquisite Corpse

This assignment was to create 8 bars of EDM (electronic dance music) in the same tempo as everyone else and using only the white notes on the piano so that each student's 8 bars would stay in the key of C Major, or its relative minor, a. Each student's 8 bars of music linked up to create one giant 72 bar piece of EDM music. This type of song is called an "exquisite corpse" and it was interesting to see the different personalities in each 8 bar section. My section is between 0:32 and 0:48.

The audiobook embedded below was the major assignment assigned in Digital Media. In the recording, I included the three pieces of music and added SFX sounds where I thought appropriate to enhance my story. I think that the music and SFX sounds add a lot to the recording. A plain vocal recording is not as enticing as one with music that fits the theme and sound effects to bring the story to life.