Narrative 2
Introduction
Above: scan of Paper prototype
A paper prototype presents the design concept for the website, before it is created digitally.

The narrative 2 unit began with writing stories in English. More specifically, it involved writing the same story 3 different times, from different perspectives, with the same dialogue and plot. After that, the story was turned into a short comic, which would later become the images for the animatic.
For Design, we used illustrator to produce a cover for our “books” using Illustrator.
Lastly, for Web, we designed websites to present our products, and an created and animation of the story. In the sections below, you’ll see the story, the book cover and the surreal art we did (unrelated to the narrative), the animatic and animation, and the product of the Blink unit (further explanation in the appropriate section).

The narrative unit was challenging for me, because I’m never been fond of creative writing. However, I think I’ve been able to come up with a decent story, and I loved designing the book jacket. Although the WebAudio animation was difficult because of how complicated After Effects can be, I enjoyed creating this website.

With this site, my main struggle was getting the parallax (the thing that makes the header backgrounds appear to move at a different speed than everything else when you scroll) to work. Other than that, I wanted to make a simple, clear site, with bold colors that echo the dusky images in the story and illustrations of it.

 

Columns

For English, the main narrative product was a single story written in a series of three “columns”, three pieces from different perspectives. I’ve formatted them here so that they appear in the form of actual columns. As the story was required dialogue-driven, it remains much the same in all three forms, with the only differences being in non-dialogue narration.

For your reading pleasure, the three columns:

 

3rd person omniscient

Slumped in two adjacent seats in a dingy, fairly crowded city bus are a student and their backpack. The student is trying to rest up against the window, but with little success thanks to the heavy vibrations of the glass. If it were a great deal quieter, one might hear the clattering of their teeth. Eventually they give up and instead rest only their elbow on the edge of the window, and their chin on their hand. Their other hand rests on top of the backpack, with a wrist through the strap and fingers gently closed around it. An earbud-wrapped smartphone can be seen sticking out of the carelessly closed zipper of the backpack. As they sit, the student keeps jolting from the movements of the bus and from an obvious effort to remain awake enough to get off at the correct stop.

They are wearing a loose, yellow tank top and a slightly too small pair of rusty orange shorts that clash horribly with the patterned blue cloth of the seats. The backpack, for its part, manages to be even more obnoxious with its painfully neon canvas exterior. It’s decorated with a splatter of bleached spots and a messily hand-sewn “EDRA” on the outer pocket. Edra’s clothing speaks of dressing for a sunnier hour of the day, although enough warmth lingers with the now setting sun that they probably wouldn’t be too cold.

As most of the seats are full, a few other passengers seem annoyed by their occupancy of multiple seats. Most don’t care enough to have feelings about it.

The bus stops again, and some passengers leave while some jump on. There is some jostling, being one of the more popular stops. Edra remains, after a cursory glance outside to see where they are and if they can get off yet. After the bus pulls away from the curb, they grab for their phone in resigned anticipation to the wait they have left. They are unsuccessful, because the phone is no longer in their backpack, a fact which is soon discovered by a noticeably more alert Edra.

They do a cursory check under, around, and near their seats, but without any expectation of success. Turning around, they ask the man directly behind their seat, “‘Scuse me, did you see someone take my phone?” and receive a small shake of his head. Running their hand through their hair, Edra sighs and turns to the nearest standing passenger.

“No. Are you sure you didn’t just leave it at home?”

Edra huffs. “As if.”

“Of course, kids these days would sew their phones into their hands if they could. You really should try to once in a while”

1st person

An earbud-wrapped smartphone can be seen sticking out of the carelessly closed zipper of the backpack. As they sit, the student keeps jolting from the movements of the bus and from an obvious effort to remain awake enough to get off at the correct stop.

They are wearing a loose, yellow tank top and a slightly too small pair of rusty orange shorts that clash horribly with the patterned blue cloth of the seats. The backpack, for its part, manages to be even more obnoxious with its painfully neon canvas exterior. It’s decorated with a splatter of bleached spots and a messily hand-sewn “EDRA” on the outer pocket. Edra’s clothing speaks of dressing for a sunnier hour of the day, although enough warmth lingers with the now setting sun that they probably wouldn’t be too cold.

As most of the seats are full, a few other passengers seem annoyed by their occupancy of multiple seats. Most don’t care enough to have feelings about it.

The bus stops again, and some passengers leave while some jump on. There is some jostling, being one of the more popular stops. Edra remains, after a cursory glance outside to see where they are and if they can get off yet. After the bus pulls away from the curb, they grab for their phone in resigned anticipation to the wait they have left. They are unsuccessful, because the phone is no longer in their backpack, a fact which is soon discovered by a noticeably more alert Edra.

They do a cursory check under, around, and near their seats, but without any expectation of success. Turning around, they ask the man directly behind their seat, “‘Scuse me, did you see someone take my phone?” and receive a small shake of his head. Running their hand through their hair, Edra sighs and turns to the nearest standing passenger.

“No. Are you sure you didn’t just leave it at home?”

Edra huffs. “As if.”

“Of course, kids these days would sew their phones into their hands if they could. You really should try to once in a while”

3rd person limited

they give up and instead rest only their elbow on the edge of the window, and their chin on their hand. Their other hand rests on top of the backpack, with a wrist through the strap and fingers gently closed around it. An earbud-wrapped smartphone can be seen sticking out of the carelessly closed zipper of the backpack. As they sit, the student keeps jolting from the movements of the bus and from an obvious effort to remain awake enough to get off at the correct stop.

They are wearing a loose, yellow tank top and a slightly too small pair of rusty orange shorts that clash horribly with the patterned blue cloth of the seats. The backpack, for its part, manages to be even more obnoxious with its painfully neon canvas exterior. It’s decorated with a splatter of bleached spots and a messily hand-sewn “EDRA” on the outer pocket. Edra’s clothing speaks of dressing for a sunnier hour of the day, although enough warmth lingers with the now setting sun that they probably wouldn’t be too cold.

As most of the seats are full, a few other passengers seem annoyed by their occupancy of multiple seats. Most don’t care enough to have feelings about it.

The bus stops again, and some passengers leave while some jump on. There is some jostling, being one of the more popular stops. Edra remains, after a cursory glance outside to see where they are and if they can get off yet. After the bus pulls away from the curb, they grab for their phone in resigned anticipation to the wait they have left. They are unsuccessful, because the phone is no longer in their backpack, a fact which is soon discovered by a noticeably more alert Edra.

They do a cursory check under, around, and near their seats, but without any expectation of success. Turning around, they ask the man directly behind their seat, “‘Scuse me, did you see someone take my phone?” and receive a small shake of his head. Running their hand through their hair, Edra sighs and turns to the nearest standing passenger.

“No. Are you sure you didn’t just leave it at home?”

Edra huffs. “As if.”

“Of course, kids these days would sew their phones into their hands if they could. You really should try to once in a while”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of having three columns is to present three different interpretations of the narrative, and to emphasize the subjectivity of any form of storytelling. The perspectives I chose were 3rd person omniscient (knowing everything that’s happening), 1st person (told from the perspective of the protagonist), and 3rd person limited (knowing only what the chosen non-protagonist character knows).

Art

It’s been a busy unit in Design. We created the book jacket, surrealism piece, and blink piece (see section “blink” at the bottom of the page). Each was made with a specific set of expectations for the final draft, which proved both a helpful guideline and a restrictive cinch. Below, you can see further details as they pertain to each work.

 

book jacket

I was incredibly excited to create the book jacket! i had a very specific idea about what it would look like, right down to the tone of the colors. Although that ended up being too detailed for me to reasonably make, I think this simplified version turned out wonderfully. Some of the book jacket-specific details were surprising to me, namely the publisher name, barcode, and price, which ended up in various corners of the image for that flair of legitimacy.

Lost

Lost centers around a young adult who is on the bus home from a long shift at work, only to find that their phone has been stolen by someone on the bus. They confront various other passengers on the bus in an effort to either locate the thief, which does nothing to help them toward their goal. Eventually, they end up in a aggressive argument which culminates in a dramatic exit as the bus rolls to a stop where they need to get off. Defeated and still rather irritated, they pocket a twenty dollar bill after watching it fall off of a passerby’s person.

The scene on my cover doesn’t illustrate a specific scene, but rather the tone and atmosphere of the story. The brightly colored characters on the front are the protagonist and the thief, although the thief only appears in the narrative by virtue of the repercussions of the stolen phone. The orange outside the bus’ window sets the tone of the piece, evoking the dusky skies and orange streetlights that match the exhaustion and low spirits of the protagonist.

 

 

Surrealism

the surrealist project involved more photography than i enjoy. It was interesting to work on blending the images together because I tend to use photoshop for drawing more than image editing, but I think it’s not a project I would want to repeat. I’m glad to know about tools such as HDR photography, layer masks, and infrared filters, but while I’m quite satisfied with this work, I’m content to leave surrealist photography alone.

Photograph

The concept from which I worked for this semester was “impatience because of the desire to rebel.” This piece is my interpretation of that. The setting of a racetrack implies impatience like in the anticipatory moment at a starting line, right before the race begins. The runners are all tensed up, waiting for the gun to fire. The one runner at the forefront of the piece represents impatience when it causes one to jump the gun, so to speak. It’s the inability to resist impatience. The runner in front also exemplifies the desire to rebel in that instead of waiting in a row behind the line like the others, they have begun already. They have refused to conform to the rules which would have allowed them to succeed, which is the heart of rebellion.

The colors and mediums I chose reflect this idea. The simple, flat colors and imperfect, wiggly lines are themselves an expression of impatience in that an impatient person might not want to refine shapes or add depth. I highlighted the energy of impatience by using bright, primary colors (especially for the runner in front) and long flowing lines suggestive of motion.

goodbye

 

 

 

Animation

animatic to be added shortly. Until then, please enjoy this video of a cute but angry little gecko.

the animatic is the midway point between the drawn images of a graphic novel or comic, and the final product of the animation. It represents of rough version of the animation, and is created using scanned in panels, rough sound, and simple effects such as zooming and panning. This establishes timing and basic camera movements, which are then used as a template to translate to the final animation.

 

animation to be added shortly. until then, please enjoy this educational video about the legislative process.

Learning to use After Effects was an arduous process. It’s a lot more complicated than flash (which we used to make last year’s animations), but has far more useful tools. The ability to adjust camera angles in relation to the images makes it far easier to manage panning and 3 dimensional adjustments. I’m still not totally sold on after effects, in part because its many tools makes it a bit unwieldy at times. All in all, though, it’s very effective. Except for the long learning process, I’m glad to be using it.

Blink

image presented is not the final image. Will be updated soon.

The blink project was based on the idea of thin-slicing, making judgements based on very little information. We began the unit by reading the book Blink my Malcolm Gladwell. That was followed by activities with fine art materials: pen, paper, colored pencils, and watercolors.

The pieces created with those were used to create the image to the right; the patterns of the face were made with pen, the kneeling figure with pen and watercolor, and the blue swirl is a colored pencil piece that was edited to death until it looked like what you see here. The photograph in the background was taken specifically for this project, when I began to create this image. Everything else you see was produced digitally, although the words were taken directly from one of the free-write exercises we did as part of the blink unit.

Artist statement will be added upon completion.

I absolutely loved creating the blink piece. I seldom have the opportunity to use watercolors or good quality colored pencils, and the detail of the patterns you can see here attest to my excitement to do so. Each is an fairly abstract work, meant to bring out the subconscious by not requiring much thought to make. I loved how they came out, and jumped right into the final image, finishing it in only a couple of days. This whole unit is probably my favorite one we’ve done in Freestyle. I’m not sure how i feel about the underlying philosophies behind the book blink, but working with subconsciousness in art has been a resounding success.