The Visual Narrative Project(s) focused on being able to tell a story through words, visuals, and even music. During this unit, I learned various programs, such as Illustrator and Protools in Digital Media, while in Animation, we were focusing on Adobe After Effects.

At the beginning of this unit, we got started on writing our flash fiction (after reading a couple of flash fictions in class for inspiration). My personal inspiration for my own flash fiction was what I was going through in that current time; I had recently broken up with two toxic friends who both had very similar stories with how I left them. Channeling my sadness, I wrote a story about a man who took advantage of a young college student, gradually taking more and more from them and growing his “garden”. Later on, in Digital Media, we would read out this story and make it an audio production.

The Garden

It starts like this.

I met a man, a nice man, admittedly. I was often alone at the time, and his companionship was nice. College life was dragging and worrying me, and his wisdom eased my worries. He would walk me to school, give me gifts and we would hang out at his place sometimes. He would tell me stories of his childhood and way after, he seemed very wise so I put my trust in him. My worries. My pain.

I had a garden, a small, but nice garden, thankfully. I had neglected it for years but the man helped me start it up again. He helped me water my plants and plant the seeds, fertilize the soil and keep track of the season. 

One day, in turn, he wanted my help as well. “You see,” he told me, he had wanted to start a garden as well. At first, he wanted something small, “just a tomato plant, you’ll see,” but he didn’t have the funds nor a job, so he asked to borrow a seed from me.

I said, “Sure!” and happily, I shared my tomatoes with him. It was nice to finally give him something, after all he’s done for me. And so days went by, as his small garden grew, a tomato seed turned into two. He would walk me to school, give me gifts, and share stories of his childhood and later. We would laugh and talk for hours and sit in our gardens. I had never smiled so much and been happier to have a friend. 

Soon, he aspired to a garden like mine, “You see,” he started, “my tomatoes are nice, but how will I make chicken noodle soup? Surely, I need carrots too.” But alas, with no funds nor a job, he needed a carrot seed. And peas. And cucumbers. 

And so happily, I shared the seeds with him. After all, he was such a good friend, he walked me to school and gave me gifts, he gave me wisdom and sometimes I shared mine. We laughed and talked for hours while we sat in our gardens. Because, before him, I had never smiled so much and been happier to have a friend. He helped my garden so I’ll help his. 

So the weeks continued. There was little time for school, as I needed to work on my garden to help his. He gave me fewer gifts, as he was busy at work with his garden which he called a masterpiece. My garden was quiet, but at his, he would talk about all the wisdom he could give. I had never smiled so much at someone’s garden’s success. 

Another day, he had a garden the size of what I dreamed of, tomatoes and carrots, potatoes and peas, cucumbers and oh, how it was dreamy. Compared to mine, it felt weak, how truly wise he was, to acquire all these plants in so little time. But, the man, with all his wisdom, wanted more. He looked down at me and said “Well, good friend, I know you’ll do me one, just one more favor. Unroot some plants from your garden for me, will ya? You’ve got some really nice plants going here, but they’d feel better in my garden, no? Don’t you think they would be happier there?”

And so happily, I took some of my garden to his. After all, he was such a great friend. The best friend I’ve ever had. Months went by, we didn’t walk anymore, the gardens grew and grew and I found it hard to find time for myself. And he didn’t have time for gifts, but wisdom, oh such wisdom he gave! At his garden, he would talk about how he rode the seas, slayed legendary beasts, and wept magical tears. He talked about how he had studied plants and people for years, and sometimes, he would talk about how my worries could only be shared with him…

But one day it wasn’t the same. He came to my apartment covered in sweat or water from the heavy rain. He huffed and puffed and mumbled on about him and his garden that was a masterpiece. He had created a garden beyond dreams; with tomatoes and carrots, potatoes and peas, cucumbers and celery, and soon there were strawberries and blueberries too, and he had planted an apple tree or two, had crops in and out of each season, so many crops that he had been selling them for some funds. 

He stared into my eyes, his wild eyes, and said “Look, friend, we have been friends for a while, yeah? You’re a good friend. You’re a great friend to me. You’ve helped me so much.” He smiled, “But, I need one more thing, just one more favor from you.” He crept closer. “For my garden, I need you.”

I was not happy this time. I was not ecstatic, I was not eager, and I did not act.. This man, a nice man admittedly, had been a good, a great friend… but I had already given my all.

But maybe my all wasn’t enough to repay my debt. For his walks, his gifts, his wisdom, all came at a cost.

So when, when I had decided what to do,

It ended like that.

I think for a first time, I did a pretty good job communicating the vibe of the story; going from a gradual chill or happy vibe to a concerning one.I am most proud of the last minute-ish of it; not only was it the most fun to edit but it also sounds the best in my opinion. I really enjoy the door slamming effect I added which has not only scared me upon relisten but my friends too! Music and SFX really add to the overall story and helps you visualize it. Without them, I think I would doze off during a reading, but the two tools really help the listener be engaged and entertained.

This unit, we learned and used a lot of Adobe Illustrator. These skills were handy to make a lot of cover images (for my music and audio production), but we also used it to make a handful of projects!

Exquisite Corpse Group Project

For the Exquisite Corpse group project, I had the simple idea of drawing a dragon (since I was drawing the head). I wanted my side of things to blend in better with the rest of my groups, so I only partically gave it a background, and left the rest of it transparent (or white in this case). I also (obviously) wanted to draw a Baby Earl so you can see him being sucked into the void dragon on the left of the canvas.

Short Story Album Cover

My short story album cover was a simple one, I did a small illustration with some eyes- since my character isn’t supposed to have one set appearance- and a wilting flower, which symbolizes the garden. Another key detail that could be missed is the background- depending on which device you are looking on, there is a semi-subtle pattern of eyes that I made for this piece! Overall, I think this project turned out pretty well for the time I made it in.

Illustrator Project

I enjoyed learning Illustrator a lot more than Photoshop, it felt like Illustrator had a lot more “drawing” options, which was very fun for a digital artist like myself. I enjoyed the various options available to you such as the patterns and the making of custom symbols, whereas Photoshop does not have these options. Most notably, Illustrator had the pen tool, and I enjoyed using it to create perfect lines.
For my illustrator project, I decided to do the mousepad as my physical production. I own a PC at home, yet I’ve never had a mousepad to use for it, and resorting to using a thin kitchen towel for any gaming or work purposes. I thought it would be super fun to not only make a design for my mousepad, but to keep it later on.
For my final product, I decided to draw a lot of my character, Baby Earl, floating in space. For the majority of this art piece, I used the pen tool (to get those perfect lines) for my Baby Earls. A lot of these guys are dressed up as different characters (like the Baby Earl with the pink bow is named Baba) or running gags (like the greedy Baby Earl with two oranges) between me and my friends. There is also a grey baby dragon, which is called a Baby Awers!

The Illustrator project was genuinely very fun for me- I loved the idea of drawing or designing something, and then turning it into a physical product- I have never been able to do that before. Being able to finally have my own mousepad has been really great for me, and I love looking at it!!

For the music portion of this unit, there were two main projects: The Music Recording Project and the Experimental Music Project: both similar but different in their separate ways. The Music Recording project was a group project, where I had worked with Anabelle to make a cover of the song “I’ve Got Some Falling To Do” by Lemon Demon. The Experimental Music project however was when I was able to make my OWN backing track- and original music- through Protools.

Music Recording Project

This project, as mentioned earlier, I had worked with Anabelle B. We settled on “I’ve Got Some Falling To Do” by Lemon Demon- an artist we both like. The recording session was fun, I was mostly nervous the entire time- hence the shaking of my voice in the recording- but I’m glad I could work on this with Anabelle as she was really fun and encouraging the entire time. I was also able to see her play the drums (as part of the backing track) and it was super cool! After we had recorded everything in the studio, we received the file from Mr. Flo and were tasked to mix and edit it to our liking. In the end, we had an the entire cover of the whole song! Anabelle also drew the cover, which turned out amazing.

We both had lots of fun doing this project! We both developed our musical confidence and a unique understanding of what goes behind the scenes of a recording project. We also learned how to musically collaborate. Anabelle got the experience of playing an instrument in a professional setting while I also got to experience how to record vocals and some behind the scene stuff in a professional way.

Experimental Music Project

It took me a hot minute to actually start on this project. I was having a hard time making a beat I actually liked, and for multiple classes I'd start something small, and then delete it and restart the next class. Finally, on a fateful day, I had made something I actually enjoyed, and I continued from there. My song is really simple, its mostly the same thing over and over again, but I really liked it and I was proud of myself for making something that was enjoyable at the very least. Turns out- all that was missing is my choice in instruments! In the end, I'm glad to have gotten the practice I did with Protools via music, as its something I've wanted to do for years. And of course I had to make the album cover Baby Earl related- because what isn't Baby Earl related in my works.

I didn’t really have much of an inspiration for this song piece, I kind of just went with whatever sounded good to me! I mostly used the Xpand!2 because I really like the variety and the electronic sounds in music vs more realistic ones (like a piano). I originally wanted to make something related to my OC's, but I quickly forgot about that goal when I entered a “flowstate” with the instruments I was using. I am most proud of the fact that this song actually sounds pretty nice; I had never really made a beat with instruments that sounded so well together like this one. During this whole project, I learned a lot about various tools at disposal in Pro Tools and a little bit about what makes music sound good as well!

Puppet Walk Cycle

The first project for this unit in Animation that we did was the puppet (aka puppet walk). First we had to sketch out our puppet on paper and then draw it digitally. For this assignment, I decided to do one of my characters, Illear, who you can read about in the photo above. The puppet itself is only okay, as this is my first time making a puppet and I accidentally made them waay too skinny. I tried to keep my design simple for this character as well since I knew this would be a tough character to model. At the current time of writing this, I have changed Illears design significantly.

Above is my final product (with a collage of everyone elses character walks), my character is the first one to show. Making the stop motion of the puppet was relatively easy, but drawing the 2d version was hard work. It was mainly much harder for me because of the requirement to use photoshop- and I am NOT a big fan of photoshop. It has a messy animation feature and I would have preferred to have just been allowed to use Toonsquid, on my ipad. For my final work on both, it looks fine. I'm aware the 2d guy walks waay too fast, but I couldn't really fix it before Christmas break. Fun fact: I actually had to restart this project, because the first time, my frames from both my 3d and 2d puppet started to disappear on After Effects, until they disappeared all together (it was sad in the moment, but funny long-term).

Lip Sync Animation

THIS project is where I got to SHINE! I was able to use Toonsquid for this one, and I was SUPER stoked to be able to animate something to an audio (as thats what I usually do in my freetime). I did a lot more than I needed to- animating about an entire minute- but I was super happy with the result. I think this is definitely one of my best works in this entire class so far. This animation is about my character- Bob (lets not talk about it), grieving a world that destroyed itself.

Visual Narrative Group Project

For this project, I was paired up with El B and Nico P to make a short story that has a narrative. This was my first time doing something like this ever and I had high hopes. We came up with an idea of a detective mantis trying to hunt down the infamous graffiti artist.

I had rushed our animatic since I felt that it was more important to start on the project with the limited time we had. It is mostly comprised of our storyboard which I made and some cool editing effects I wanted to add in the final. Otherwise, an animatic is important for timing and getting a feel of how the story will go.

While making this project, I had realized I was able to work a lot faster than the rest of my teammates. My teammates in the end couldn't catch up to the deadline, and I had to do most of the animations and backgrounds- which made me very stressed. I fear because of that, I couldn't make the best project I knew I could and I am not very proud of the final product. I think the animation scenes by themselves are cool, but all together it only makes an okay story! Otherwise, it was good experience with narrative animated story production, which is something I want to do in the future.