“How well can you apply advanced narrative techniques to build a compelling story?”
Narrative Visual Perspective in English
For senior year’s narrative assignment, we were given the World-Building project. The point of the project was for us students to work together to create a new world outside of our own, and then create a story that takes place in that new world.
As someone who wants to someday become a comic book author, and who is constantly creating new worlds and stories – this was an assignment I was super excited for when I first heard of it, and it was one that I really enjoyed.
For this project, I worked with Jessica Lohse. We had a day where we got to talk about our story ideas with others in our class, and see who we might want to collaborate with. I brought a story that I’d been working on since middle school – and Jessica was interested in the story, so she decided to work with me on it.
The first thing we needed to do was finalize the main characters. I had a basic idea of all of the characters, but they were characters that I’d made a couple of years ago – and only one of them really stood well as a character that I wanted to write about (though even he got adjustments). Jessica ended up helping me rework all of the other characters into something that worked better for the story that I wanted to tell.
There were a number of other characters we redesigned as well, but these two were the most important, so they’re the ones that I’m adding to the website. (We plan on making this into an actual comic soon, so we can’t have too many spoilers!)
Jessica and I also worked on finalizing the map and the location of where the story would take place, as well as writing out the fully story.
I’d explain more here, but part of the assignment was actually to present our world in a Pitch Presentation!! You can watch below to see what we created!!
Ultimately, this project ended up being just as fun as I hoped it would be, and I’m really glad it was part of the curriculum this year. I loved being able to make better a story that I’d been working on for years, into something that felt more properly like a story that I could draw. Jessica and I are actually working on making the first chapter of this comic for our Zenith project, which is something to look forward to!!
Narrative Visual Perspective in Digital Media
For the multi-layered art project, we were taught to make 3-D objects using multiple 2-D layers. We had multiple options as to what we could create – though Jessica and I both decided that a light-box was our favorite option.
The light box had to be related to the story we’d made in English – and after a bit of talking and thinking about it, Jessica had the great idea of making our light box the Council Hall (or the main government building) of our story. It would give us an opportunity to create more concrete designs for all of the members of the Council, as well as allow us to expand a bit more on each of the regions (as the window in the back has 9 sections – one to display each of the regions).
It would also allow us to highlight one of our main characters and show his importance in the world – so when she suggested the idea, to me, I was immediately sold.
First, we had to design the characters. Our main character was already designed, so we had to design the 8 characters who stand with him at the table.
Once we had that, it was time to start working in Illustrator!! I sketched out the silhouettes of the characters in Clip Studio, then got to tracing that in illustrator. While I was working on that, Jessica began to work on the window in the background. While it took quite a while for her to finish, it’s honestly the most gorgeous aspect of the piece (she did so good!!) so it was well worth the wait!!
After we’d finished the Illustrator file (to which I added the outside of the council building), we took the laser cut versions of our layers and put them together, inserting pieces of foam between to create separation between them. Afterwards, we’d added the lights batteries – fully completing the light box!!
Here’s a time-lapse video, so you can see our creation process, as well as the finished piece:
We were also required to make a digital video, where a camera moved around a digital version of the light box:
Narrative Visual Perspective in Animation
Group Narrative time!!
I was so excited for this project this year – last year, the junior group narrative animation was my favorite project, as well as the one I was the most proud of, so being able to work on something similar again this year was something that I was really looking forward to, and ultimately, really enjoyed.
For our group, we thought that it would be a fun idea to rework one of the characters a group member (Jessica Lohse) had previously made. She’d made a golem, so we thought it would be cool if we did something very simple with the golem, so that we could perfect the animation and make it look as good as possible.
Our concept was to make the golem walk through a canyon with a flower and then place it on the grave of a friend who once lived in the canyon with him.
Here’s our storyboard and animatic to help plan everything out!!
Next, it was time to actually make our 3D objects for our animation. We decided to reuse the golem character that Jessica had made, which Kyle adjusted to fit the style that we were going for better.
We also had to make many other 3D objects for our project. While the others worked on animating the golem and figuring out lighting, I looked online for good objects that we could use, such as trees and plants. I also created an entirely new 3D object for the main flower that the golem holds through the majority of the video.
Once we had those 3D objects, I did the majority of the coloring, but Camilla was the one who figured out the color scheme for the trees – which we then worked together as a team in order to color. I think we have about four or five different variations of trees, as well as one tree stump.
Because I think it looks fun, here are a couple of the flattened versions of the colors!!
Next, it was time to finally put everything together!! Throughout the process of this, Camilla had been working on the house, and I was working on the canyon as a whole – and I colored it on the day that we started putting everything together.
After Camilla and Kyle figured out the camera animation, I would go in and edit the background by adding plants, and deleting overlapping or floating trees. This took a lot of time, and constant checking, but eventually we got it to a point where the final renders looked good. Kyle and Camilla also figured out how to work with depth of field, so that the camera would focus on the objects near it and then blur the background.
As we were finishing up our final renders, Jessica worked on making the final credits (she had a very specific imagine in mind), while I worked on making a number of final illustrations. I did a number of them, but I thought I’d share only my favorite here, of the golem and a number of animals.
Once we had finished all that and put our renders together, Kyle did the sound design (he even made music!!) for our video, finishing it off.
Here’s the final animation!
I’m so happy with how this animation came out. The story is simple and there isn’t too much going on, but because of how simple it was we were able to make each individual piece look as good as it could be – and because of that I think it came out gorgeous. While I do enjoy working on 2D projects more, I have to say that this narrative project is now tied for my favorite Freestyle Project.