english and digital media
introduction
how can I tell a visually structured story?
Throughout this Visual Narrative unit, we explored how to tell stories in both written and visual formats. We started by crafting flash fiction stories and then transformed those narratives into illustrated sequences, complete with audio storytelling. I used Adobe Illustrator to bring my scenes to life—learning how to use the Pen Tool, pattern fills, and Live Paint to enhance each frame. In Pro Tools, I worked on refining voiceovers, experimenting with tone and timing to match the mood of each scene.
One of the most engaging parts of the process was creating my character from scratch. Thinking through their design, motivations, and challenges helped me better understand how character development drives a story forward. This unit also boosted my confidence with digital tools.
story
The Visual Narrative project began in our English class, where we read several short stories—most notably The Metamorphosis. In these stories, we analyzed what the main character wants, what obstacles stand in their way, and the various conflicts that unfold. In The Metamorphosis, for example, the protagonist Gregor wakes up one day transformed into an insect, shocking his family. Since he was the family’s sole breadwinner, his transformation meant he could no longer work, putting financial strain on the household. As I read, I noticed how Gregor faced both internal and external conflicts, especially being treated like an outsider in his own home, which added to the story’s suspense. We also read other short stories and watched animations that explored similar ideas, which inspired us to develop our own stories for the Visual Narrative project.
Drawing inspiration from the feeling of stagefright, I created a story where the main character, Lila Adams, is a 7-year-old girl who wants nothing more than to be included and understood by her classmates. She expresses herself through her artwork, which she plans to present in a school talent show. Lila is imaginative, shy, and deeply anxious about being accepted. To reflect her emotional journey, I imagined her standing front and center on a stage, notebook and pencils in hand, lit by a warm, golden glow that contrasts her vulnerability with quiet courage. I’d shoot the scene from a slightly low angle to emphasize her bravery and create a feeling of emotional weight—showing how even small moments can feel huge when someone is putting their whole heart on display.
To develop my character, we started by completing a character questionnaire, where we listed as many details as possible—such as physical appearance, hobbies, background, desires, and even hidden secrets. The goal was to know our character so well that they felt like a best friend or family member. Next, we created a plot map to shape our story’s structure. This included identifying the exposition, how the conflict builds, and ultimately how it gets resolved.
After mapping out our plot and outlining key character traits, we dove into drafting our full short stories. Throughout the writing process, we focused on revision—especially incorporating vivid sensory language and shifting from simply telling the reader information to showing it through action and detail. Once our narratives were complete, we transitioned into the production phase in Digital Media.
Using Pro Tools, an audio-editing software similar to Adobe Audition, we recorded voiceovers of our stories. I paid close attention to tone, pacing, and expression to make the narration feel emotionally engaging. After recording, I enhanced the audio with techniques like normalization and added transitions, sound effects, and background music to bring the story to life. I chose music to bookend the piece—setting the mood during the opening and reinforcing the uplifting resolution—while inserting sound effects throughout to highlight dramatic or emotional moments.
my story: fleeting moments
transcript
Lila swayed on the swing, the seat too big for her small frame, her feet barely brushing the ground. The ropes creaked with every movement, and the wind tangled in her wild curls, pushing them into her face. She flicked them away with an annoyed jerk, eyes squinting up at the sky. Above her, birds zipped between the branches, darting in and out of the trees. They’re free, she thought.
Her fingers tapped restlessly on the edge of her notebook. Inside, the pages were a mess of wild, colorful sketches. Birds with wings that didn’t fit, spirals, strange shapes—nothing anyone would expect. Perfect, she thought. Perfect for them to stare at. Nearby, a group of kids chattered excitedly, their voices rising above the hum of the playground.
A few of them were discussing the talent show that was scheduled for the evening. Singing, juggling, dancing. The usual, Lila thought, irritation bubbling up. What if I did something different? Her mind sparked with the idea of not just performing—but shocking them. Not just showing them her art, but forcing them to think. To feel uncomfortable.
She didn’t want to stand in front of them and fit in. She wanted to disrupt the order.
The hours slipped by, each minute feeling like it dragged heavier than the last. She scribbled in her notebook with growing intensity, her birds twisting and contorting in unnatural ways, their wings ripped and jagged, their bodies spiraling in chaotic arcs. These were not graceful creatures. These were symbols—of freedom, of rebellion. Of not fitting into the tidy spaces that everyone else seemed to occupy.
When lunch came, Lila moved through the playground, notebook in hand, as a commotion erupted around a small bird lying beneath a tree. The group of kids gathered, laughing as one of them poked the injured creature. Lila’s chest tightened. She felt the familiar urge to turn away, to avoid becoming part of something she couldn’t control. But the sight of other kids taunting and teasing the poor bird flicked a switch inside of her.
The one girl of the group she recognized, Mia carefully picked the bird up, holding it gently in her hands as she whispered something to the others. The laughter ceased, and the group scattered, leaving Mia to walk away, her soft voice still lingering in the air.
Lila’s fingers tightened around her notebook, the weight of the bird’s fragility pressing against her thoughts. Her mind raced between wanting to be numb to it all, and feeling a spark of something else—courage. Not just the courage to stand up in front of the class, but the courage to act, to speak when silence felt safer.
The gym doors loomed ahead. Lila’s nerves twisted in her stomach. The voices and laughter from inside seeped out, creating a thick atmosphere of expectation. She had prepared for this, yet something about it felt off. She didn’t belong here—not with her drawings. Not in a world that valued polished acts and perfect performances.
When her turn came, Lila stepped into the spotlight, feeling it press against her like a weight. She could barely see the audience, just shadows and shapes staring back, waiting. Her heart beat painfully in her chest, her hand trembling as she clutched her notebook to her chest.
She stood there for a moment, the stillness suffocating. Slowly, she flipped open her notebook, showing the first page—one of her birds, its wings twisted in sharp angles, its body mid-fall. The bird looked nothing like the graceful creatures they would expect. It was a broken, imperfect thing, a creature out of place in the neat world they all knew.
She turned to the next page, revealing another bird, wings bent as if crushed. The creature seemed to defy the idea of flight itself, its body refusing to take off. There was no grand speech, no prepared words. Lila simply let the drawings speak for themselves, her eyes scanning the pages, her fingers brushing against the rough sketches, as if coaxing them to life. The words came slowly, but steadily—about freedom that wasn’t neat, about a kind of flight that wasn’t about soaring, but surviving.
The audience was still. There was no clapping, no immediate applause. The gym felt thick with the silence of a hundred waiting eyes. Lila’s breath was heavy, her hands shaky as she closed the notebook and turned to leave.
The walk offstage felt endless, each step a confirmation of her own discomfort. The familiar feeling of not fitting in settled in her chest like an old, unwelcome friend. But then, as she passed the others, the quiet ripple of applause reached her ears. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t forced. It was warm, real.
Mia was waiting for her backstage, her face lit with quiet admiration.
Lila didn’t need the applause. The feeling inside her was more than the echo of clapping hands. It was the slow, steady realization that she had shown them something different. Something that was hers. Something that made them think.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t clean. But it was freedom, just the way she wanted it to be.
conclusion
One of the biggest hurdles I encountered during this project was figuring out how to navigate Pro Tools. As a first-time user, I was intimidated by the sheer number of controls and settings. It took a lot of trial and error to understand how to set up tracks, make edits, and export the final audio correctly. Recording the narration came with its own set of difficulties—I often stumbled over my words, and small noises like my hands brushing against my clothes were picked up by the mic, which meant re-recording several takes.
Finishing this project made me realize how valuable these audio production skills are. Now that I know how to record and polish sound, I see the potential for applying these techniques to other creative projects, like videos or announcements for clubs I’m part of. I also have a deeper respect for the behind-the-scenes work in audio storytelling. There’s a lot more to it than just hitting “record”—it takes patience, attention to detail, and a clear understanding of how to engage an audience through sound. Looking back, I wish I had added more vocal energy to certain parts of my narration—some lines still feel a little flat, and with more emotion, they could have had a stronger impact.
illustrations
exquisite corpse
One of the most rewarding parts of this unit was getting to apply my Adobe Illustrator skills across a wide range of creative projects—not just for the Short Story Album Art, but for many other unique pieces. Two projects that stood out the most were the horizontal exquisite corpse and the custom physical product design.
The exquisite corpse was a collaborative art project where each person drew a segment of a larger image without seeing the rest. Once all the pieces were combined, the result was a surreal, unpredictable creation. For my section, I illustrated a grotesque smile with a tongue hanging out, symbolizing greed. I experimented with techniques I’d picked up in Illustrator, including textured brushes, pattern repetition, the Pen Tool, and Live Paint to bring it to life.
product choice
Out of everything, the physical product design project was my favorite. We used Illustrator to create designs for real objects—stickers, mugs, mousepads, clothing, and even laser-cut wood lanterns. I loved how hands-on and personal this felt. Designing something that could be printed and brought home was incredibly satisfying, and the fact that we could reproduce our items affordably made it feel useful and empowering.
For the Adobe Illustrator project, where we got to create our physical product, I decided to make a tumbler for my grandparents. They live in Carmel, California half of the time, and they absolutely love it there. As a tribute to them, I designed an illustration on a water bottle for them to bring on their long hikes and walks by the ocean. After finishing the illustration, it was printed out and fused with heat onto the tumbler.
artist statement
I designed this custom tumbler as a tribute to my grandparents love for hiking in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Using Adobe Illustrator, I created a minimalist design with the pen tool, focusing on smooth, flowing lines that capture the area’s charm. also hand stylize
Unlike my other projects, this required designing for a 3D object, ensuring the artwork wrapped seamlessly around the tumbler. The biggest challenge was balancing precision with a hand-drawn look, which I refined using a drawing tablet and pressure-sensitive brushes.
conclusion
Working on this Illustrator-based project helped me better understand how Adobe Illustrator differs from Photoshop, especially when it comes to creating clean and scalable artwork. One of the most important things I learned is that Illustrator uses vector graphics, which means your designs can be resized to any scale without losing clarity or becoming pixelated. This makes it ideal for things like logos, posters, and product designs that need to maintain quality across different sizes.
Another major difference I noticed is how Illustrator treats shapes and drawing tools. Unlike Photoshop, where you paint directly onto the canvas with brushes, Illustrator requires you to build forms using tools like the Pen Tool and then apply color through fills and strokes. At first, this felt unfamiliar, but over time I grew to appreciate the accuracy and flexibility that this method offers.
Through this project, I’ve gained a new appreciation for Illustrator as a creative tool. I now see it as not just a design program, but a way to make polished, professional visuals for a wide range of uses—whether that’s for school, personal art, physical product customization, or even web design. I’m looking forward to experimenting more with it in future projects.
design
narrative creature
In this Design unit, our main focus was on illustrating narrative stories using Adobe Illustrator, alongside experimenting with photography and colored lighting to express mood and atmosphere. Before jumping into the larger projects, we spent time building up our skills by learning how to draw precise shapes in Illustrator, using tools like the Pen Tool and Live Paint.
To develop a solid foundation, we worked through several practice exercises. These included tracing a rubber duck to get comfortable with clean outlines and curves, and drawing our bedrooms in one-point perspective to practice creating depth and spatial accuracy in our compositions.
For our first illustration project in the narrative unit, we created a creature that embodied our character’s personality traits using animal symbolism. Based on my flash fiction story, I chose five traits—curious, imaginative, compassionate, shy, and creative—and matched each one with an animal part: a monkey tail for curiosity, a parrot body for imagination, honeybee wings for compassion, gecko eyes for shyness, and octopus tentacles for creativity. After gathering reference images online, I traced and combined the animal parts in Adobe Illustrator to form a unique hybrid creature. I selected a color palette of blue, purple, pink, and orange to represent those character traits. One of the most enjoyable parts of the process was experimenting with different textures—feathers, wings, tentacles, and more—to bring each animal feature to life. The final result was a vibrant, symbolic creature that visually expressed the essence of my character.
For the background of my illustration, I chose to draw a quiet, moonlit beach scene, setting the horizon low to match the creature’s height and viewpoint. I wanted the setting to reflect the emotional tone of the story—symbolizing freedom, solitude, and introspection—so I used muted pinks and soft blues to stay consistent with my color scheme and reinforce those feelings. The beach, calm and empty under the night sky, served as a space for the creature to reflect, just before the story’s conflict begins. Once both the creature and background were complete, I placed the creature into the scene to visually represent the moment in the narrative where everything feels still, yet something significant is about to change.
artist statement
My story illustrates an elementary student, Lila Adams, and her struggle to fit in with her peers, and attempts to show relatability in an upcoming talent show. However, just hours before the talent show, she was mortified to stumble across an injured bird, surrounding by a group of ignorant and unbothered classmates. Upon seeing this, she becomes inspired to participate in the talent show for the purpose of breaking the mold and encouraging other students to look at something seemingly insignificant in a new light, and to put yourself in other’s shoes.The scene drawn represents the very first place Lilia would go if she herself could experience the perspective of a bird.
As a class, we begun with brainstorming five different types of animals that represent our character: one mammal, one aquatic animal, one insect, one bird, and one reptile. The creature body parts that I ended up choosing were a monkey tail, octopus tentacles, honeybee wings, a parrot body, and a gecko head. The monkey represented my character’s curiosity, the octopus showing creativity, a honeybee illustrating compassion, a parrot alluding to her imaginative nature, and the gecko symbolizing shyness. I then began to find reference images online and trace them in Adobe Illustrator. For my color scheme, I decided to use blues, purples, and pinks, with an accent of yellow to represent these character traits. As I was creating the beach background, I used a one point linear perspective and drew it as if the viewer was close to the ground and near the creature, slightly to the right of her. Finally, I copy and pasted my creature onto the beach illustration, where she looks out to the horizon longingly. A challenge I came across was drawing the such intricate body parts, such as suction cups on the octopus tentacles. Despite the difficulty, I highly enjoyed this project and most definitely improved my Adobe skills for the future.
narrative portrait
As part of bringing our narrative characters to life, we created a Narrative Mise En Scene portrait that reimagined our protagonist in a real-world setting. For this project, we chose a model—either a classmate or someone who physically resembled our character—and staged a photoshoot inspired by a pivotal scene from our story. Instead of just capturing a simple photo, we focused on storytelling through visual composition, background choice, and lighting. We experimented with different lighting setups, including dramatic side and back lighting, and used colored LED lights to reflect the emotional mood of the scene. This process taught us how to use portrait photography as a narrative tool, turning abstract character traits into a powerful, expressive image.
For my model, I decided to have my friend Mackenzie pose in my bedroom for me, as I couldn’t find any actual children to model for me. However, I think when I put a vibrant and childish outfit on her, along with the right setup, props, and lighting, it all came together really well and was pretty convincing. I also think it pretty clearly conveyed the emotions and mood I wanted it to.
artist statement
In this photo, we see Lila Adams, a 7-year-old girl, lying on her stomach, coloring in a notebook with her legs swinging off the side of the bed. Her outfit—a yellow shirt, jean shorts, heart-shaped sunglasses, and pigtails—adds a playful touch, but the overall mood is filled with tension. The yellow and magenta lighting I used adds an emotional intensity to the scene, representing her inner anxiety and frustration. The close-up angle pulls us into Lila’s perspective, making us feel like we’re right there with her, experiencing the vulnerability and pressure she feels in this quiet, intimate moment. The warmth of the yellow light contrasts with the unsettling magenta, highlighting both her creativity and the internal struggle she faces.
To create this image, I used two GVM light kits and a Canon camera, working through a lot of trial and error to perfect the yellow and magenta lighting that would evoke the right mood. The process was a bit of a challenge, especially since I couldn’t find a model until the last minute and didn’t know any little girls who could model. In the end, I improvised and shot my friend, which worked out, but the change in model meant I had to adapt my original concept. In Photoshop, I reduced grain and fine-tuned the color intensities and hues until the lighting felt just right. If I could change anything, I think I would’ve stuck with my original plan to shoot at a playground or school theater. I feel like those locations would have helped emphasize Lila’s nervousness and desire for connection in a more public, high-pressure environment.
reflection
Reflecting on this Design unit, I’m impressed by how much I’ve grown in using Adobe Illustrator. From illustrating my narrative creature to practicing linear perspective, I’ve built a strong foundation in digital illustration. As I became more familiar with the tools, my confidence grew—I even started exploring Illustrator on my own outside of class. These skills have already carried over into other creative work, like designing graphics for my documentary book. I’m proud of how far I’ve come with Adobe software, and I’m excited to continue building on these skills through future projects.