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Hello and welcome to my Narrative 2 site. This is where I will be showcasing my Narrative 2 unit at Freestyle Academy, School for Tech and Art. The purpose of this project was to get a deeper knowledge of creative tools and completely designing a dialogue driven story through all mediums. I was required to write a story in English, which I then turned into an Animation in Web Audio through drawing and animating characters. In Design I created a book cover for the supposed story I wrote. This website was also created in Web, in order to showcase all the things I created in the unit prior. I learned a significant amount about how to create whatever my heart desires.

English

English challenged us to write a dialogue driven short story. Below are a bunch of different collumns I wrote from different perspectives in order to get a feel for writing interesting stories. I learned a lot about writing dialogue driven stories in this unit, as well as creative story telling.

Walden Third person: Walden was a very intelligent man. A man who would do what was best, and what was safe. He was wrapped in the corporate world of lawyering and was devoid of the creativity he held so dear in his heart. All things full of creativity had been striped from Walden’s life; all things, besides his name. “Walden” was in fact significant to the extraordinary nature of the person this man was on the inside. He was above it all,and didn’t care much for material things. He wanted break free of the conventional lifestyle he was forced to live, but there were...reasons that he never did. Thoreou once wrote, “...If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”. column (Written including the reader)

First person: You never come to see me anymore. I hang here in quiet silence, in the room in which I reside, and wait. I wait for the beautiful moment in which creativity sparks inside of your brain. I wait to see colors thrown about wildly as you stare at me with those eyes. I long to see the random generation of oddly shaped polygons transform from electrical impulse to physical creation. I love facilitating the transition, acting as the connection between yourself and your art. I love being created by you. Style me, color me, paint me, cut me, pin me to the wall and stare at me before you go to sleep. Allow me to remind you of some beautiful moment, in which you used your imagination to paint a pretty picture, and store it on me. The Problem is, you never create anymore. Back when you were in your twenties you painted a lot, didn’t you? You painted surrealist works, and abstract geometrics. You painted fanciful and ornate strokes of gold and cardinal red. You took many others like me, and you filled them up; you made them whole. Someday, Walden, you will grow fond of me. You will come to visit me in this room in which I reside waiting patiently for inspiration to strike. I know that you cannot avoid this life of creativity that calls you so longingly. I see you playing lawyer, but an artist is all you could ever really be. With hope for a change, Canvas #768

Story #2 Walden Third person: Walden could not further his creation. Even though it was already bad enough that he could not continue on this particular portrait, Walden also had the tendency to be unable to work on more than one piece at a time. With this particular portrait, Walden claimed that he could not move forward because of the eyes that stared back at him from the canvas. He claimed that they begged, almost pleaded for Walden to keep them alive. Once a painting was complete the life that the canvas possessed, might vanish, and for Walden, losing his son twice was something he could not afford to do. In Walden’s eyes, the possibility of what could be, all that could fill the page, is lost 0nce one claims a piece “finished” and hangs it on a wall to die in it’s solidarity. As of now, the canvas housed a young man, only eighteen years of age, forty years younger than Walden himself, and though this young man never aged, he still bore an undeniable resemblance to his father. The boy had long blonde hair that curled up near it’s ends in the same way that Walden’s did. He had a light complexion, and bright emerald eyes, however in this particular painting, what this young man lacked was a mouth. go on to explain why walden did not paint a mouth once he does the painting speaks to him he communicates with his son

First person: My father, Walden, had given me life once before, but that livelihood was taken from me at the age of sixteen. Now, two years later, I reside in the living room of our home, in a little sunny spot, encapsulated by a canvas full of colors propped up on three legs of wood, as Walden attempted to give me life once more. It was strange, I suppose, the sudden transition between life and death and life again. I could never really explain how it is to live in a different form. “Simpler” is really the only way to explain it, but I did miss the interaction that one might have on any given day. That awkward eye contact you might make with a person you don’t know walking down the street. The half shy smile I crack I looked back at my father, deep into his unsure complexion, as he brushed the bristles across my face. He was outlining my nose, adding shadows where they might fall naturally. My father did his best to outline the face he remembered so clearly before I died. now I observed as his brush dipped into the maroon, preparing to lay the foundation for what I could only assume would be my lips. His wrist rose to equal height with the fleshy space between my nose and my chin. As he stared blankly at this space, he paused. Of course, I would ask what was wrong, but I knew just as well as he did that I had no mouth to speak.

Web

Web challenged us this unit to create an animation ranging from 1-2 minutes long. This animation had to be drawn by us in Illustrator and then we had to use our knowlege of After Effects to animate it. We then created this website to place our content.

On the right is my prototype for this website. I wrote the deteails of what I would need to create and the content that I would need to fill in to each section. This is a little inisght into the process I use to create, prior to creating, and the coming to fruition of the project ultimately. Below is the animatic, which was a rough sketch of my future animation. This animatic fits naturally as a transition between writing into graphic novel form.

Below is my final animation, which I created over many hours in Adobe After Effects. Every piece of the animation was hand created by me, through drawing in Adobe Illustrator, and animating ultimately in After Effects. This taught me a ton about After Effects, and sticking to a creation. This took forever. Perseverance my friends.

Design

Design challenged us in many ways. This unit we were prompted to create a BookJacket in InDesign for the short story which we wrote in English and then animated in Web. Below is a photo of my book jacket design which is printed on glossy paper, and really does exist. The goals here are to gain a deeper knowledge of design concepts and creative tools.

Below is my favorite unit of all of freestyle. We were tasked with taking HDR photographs and morphing them into a surreal piece of artwork. Through this project I learned A SIGNIFICANT amount about photoshop, and have found that photoshopping surrealist works is something I thoroughly enjoy doing.

Our final project in Design as of this unit was called BLINK. BLINK was inspired by the psychological study of thin slicing and the reactive unconscious. This is the part of our brain that makes instantaneous snap judgements about things without people being consciously aware that they have come to a conclusion about it. We attempted to tap into this instant subconscious to create art. We created three pieces of quickart, after meditating and then responding instantly to a prompt. These three quick arts were combined with quick writes, and turned into an ultimate Blink amplified piece of art, including all three quick arts, and fragments from the quick writes.

reflectling on the blink unit, I believe I learned a lot more than I ever have about how my subconscious works. I really felt in touch with my ability to create, and be creative. The BLINK unit taught me that drawing can be very meditative for me, and now I have picked up the hobby of sketching, which has seriously improved my life.