Narrative 1

INtroduction

The Narrative 1 unit focuses on exploring ways of telling a story, whether it be visual, auditory, or literary. In english, we dove deep into storytelling in the form of short stories and flash fiction. Using the key points highlighted in those analysis sessions, we then wrote our own narrative flash fiction. In digital media, we used those stories to create our own audio story, with cover art to go along with it. Using skills we learned in Adobe Illustrator, we created not only the covers, but two other illustration projects, each one telling its own story as well. We then move on to an experimental music production project, as well as a group narrative project in animation. We use many different applications and materials, such as Adobe Photoshop, illustrator, after effects, ProTools and more. I personally saw a lot of growth in my narrative reasoning skills, as a lot more effort was put into making the stories logical. I also learned so much about Illustrator specifically.

Story

We started english by reading a variety of different stories, mostly short ones, but then our next writing assignment was to explain a time where we found our own creativity and learned something great from it. My creative origin story is about making a painting for my extremely overworked mentor, and how it taught me better time management and reminded myself that I have the abilities, I just need to put in the work.

After writing about our own, true, personal stories, we were tasked with writing a flash fiction narrative. This story had to have all parts of a narrative three-act structure, but in only a couple paragraphs.

I had so much trouble with this project, specifically because I was unable to fully visualize the story in that time frame, and because whenever I would start the piece, I would reevaluate it in my mind and start hating everything about it. Both of these situations were also causing me to procrastinate on it in general, since I had so much anxiety built around it. After I talked to Mr. Greco I was able to get something together that I am sort of happy with, but I think that there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Our next step in this project moved over to digital media, where we had to record our poem being read aloud and then mix it with sound effects and music to create a fully cinematic experience. Originally we were supposed to use AI to create the voiceover, but that ended up costing money so we ended up recording it normally. I was a lot slower with this project than I should have been. I also kept messing up my diction during the story so the reading is still very awkward and choppy. I learned more about using premiere pro and I got to work on finding sound effects, which is actually really hard. anyway here is my audio!

Liko

Liko was alone again. They left him. The herd had moved on, finished grazing at the field, leaving him to look up from the grass and find himself utterly alone. He spent the rest of the day in a panic, running through the forest, searching for his herd, only to find that no one had even attempted to look for him. Liko didn’t like getting left behind. He knew why they ignored him. His skin didn’t match the fur that the rest of them had, and his odd appendages made it hard for him to keep up. At night, he would curl up alone under the thicket, watching the other calves tuck into their mothers for warmth. He would study his feet, and wonder why they split into five instead of two. He would look at his hands with hatred, and confusion. He hated feeling this way, where the other deer just pretended he didn’t exist. That night, as he drifted off to sleep, he dreamt of waking up with hooves instead. 

The next day, the herd was roaming the south meadow. The open sky had melted the snow early enough for the ground to have dried, and the air was warmer than it had been in weeks. Liko loved the meadow. The edge of the field led to a small range of wildflowers, which Liko liked to weave into small wreaths, and arrange in the dirt between the patches of grass. He would layer them, making sure to be gentle with the petals. Stem over stem, flower beside flower, braiding and tying. Today, Liko was choosing between some small, delicate, purple flowers and a tall, orange flower with rounded petals, when he heard footsteps stampeding towards him. The other deer were scattering, darting across the field in all directions. One fawn tripped in the grass, knocking into Liko as she fell. Liko strained to look up, searching for the cause of the panic, but with the herd rushing around him, there was no way to get a clear view. Suddenly, a roar echoed through the meadow, sending the deer into a larger, more frenzied fit of chaos. Liko stumbled, dizzy from all the commotion, unable to find direction.

He reached to the ground to gather his work, but couldn’t feel the petals. Confused, he looked back at the ground and dropped to his knees when he saw it. His flowers. Shredded. Eyes wide, looking back in horror, he watched as hoof after hoof landed on his intricate weaving. His beautiful flowers had been trampled, crushed into the dirt. Feeling tears welling up in his eyes, Liko clutched the ground, hiding his face as the last of his herd rushed by him. His chest hurt, and his throat ached, and his little hands were trembling. 

Feeling a shadow cast over him, he risked a look up, finding himself face to face with a horrifying, giant, seething brown bear. Liko’s eyes darted around, seeing a huge, snarling mouth full of dagger-like teeth, yellowed and sharp, mere inches away, and dark, crazed eyes, staring down at him, surrounded by a mass of rough, matted, grease colored fur. Hot, wet breath fanned Liko’s face, the smell clogging his throat, as he sat there paralyzed, the flowers now the furthest thing from his mind. 

The bear sniffed, then cocked its head, relaxing its snout. It seemed confused by his smell: deer-like, yet, something else. Liko kept still, trembling, frozen in fear. Leaning forward, the bear hovered its nose over Liko’s skin, smelling him. The bear opened its mouth, and Liko closed his eyes and felt his heart stop. Then, he felt something wet and rough on his face. He opened his eyes, and looked at the bear, who was sitting back, smacking its lips, confused. It stared at Liko for a moment, before continuing to investigate him. Taking deep breaths, Liko tried to calm down, attempting to stop his trembling.

The bear, seemingly having come to a decision about the boy, wrinkled its nose, before turning away and taking a few steps toward the other side of the field. It then stopped, and looked back at Liko. It seemed to expect something from him.

Liko looked towards the trampled flowers, and the trail back to the herd that had left him, feeling a sort of emptiness. They wouldn’t worry about him. He doubted they would even notice if he left. Turning back towards the bear, curiosity bloomed in his chest, tugging at him. The bear was still a few steps away, looking at him, almost as if it was waiting. Taking one last look at the flowers, Liko pushed himself back onto his feet, before darting through the grass to catch up to the bear.

I learned how to integrate sound effects into my pro tools sessions, and I learned more about using color in illustrator, such as with gradients. I learned more about hoe to record an audiobook, and I confirmed that I do not really excel in acting. I enjoyed the process of putting all of the sound files together, so I learned morea bout my interest in audio production.
I struggled with the initial recording of the story, specifically in getting my words correct. The end result still isn’t perfect, but I’m ok with it now. I kept tripping over my words and getting frustrated with myself, and I realized that I spoke at a pace that made cutting and splicing impossible, so I had to adjust my pacing. Then I realized that my tone was incredibly boring, and so I tried to add more variation to my voice, but I still sound sort of bored. I also struggled with finding good sound effects, because the freestyle library of them didn’t have specific ones I wanted like a bear roaring or a stampede, but there were no websites offering good options without having to pay. I ended up using a lion sound for the bear, and layered horses for the stampede, which I think turned out pretty well.
Next time, I would try to get a better flowing, more animated recording of the story, so that the audience isn’t distracted from the story by my inconvenient mistakes. I would also try to make the music flow a bit better, because some parts of it feel too quiet, and I still can’t tell if the music fits. I am most proud of the sound effects that I added, and the way in which I added them. specifically at the end, I layered footsteps and a couple roars and grunts to represent the two characters interacting, and then put some inspiring music on top of it, and I feel like it was able to really bring the scene to life, and that’s what I’m most proud of.
I will use it in my animations in the future to make sure that the audio aspect of the animation is just as interesting as the visual one, and I’ll be able to create a lot more creative projects like news reports and more audio books for different classes.
It showed me how much more complicated it really is to make these productions, and it also showed me that the audiobooks I have been listening to have not been creative enough for me. I now appreciate the thought that goes into sound effects, and especially music in media, and I will try to pay attention to these parts of productions in the future.

Illustrations

Being able to illustrate your own logos and backgrounds for any media you do is an essential skill in art, and an easy program to learn that with is Adobe Illustrator. We started these projects by practicing the different illustrator tools, and then used them to make a continuous body with our friends, called the exquisite corpse project.

After getting more practice with illustrator in that project, we were tasked with creating something physical using a design hat we created in illustrator. I decided to make a sticker sheet.

In this project we were given the prompt to make anything we wanted with illustrator. Given many many options, the point of the project was to display the skills we had learned in illustrator and apply them to the creation of real life products.

I created a set of stickers based off of requests and ideas from my friends. Some are related to an already existing franchise or concept, and others are just me, but each one represents a person in my life. I used illustrator to design the stickers.

I had a lot of struggles with this project. I was impossibly indecisive and I could not stick to an idea for the longest time. With Mr. Flo’s help I landed on this idea, of making stickers for people, and it made it a lot easier to get the project done. If I were to do this again I might have made the flower hand and the blood hands a little less complicated, because they ended up looking sort of cluttered an I feel like I could have achieved the same visual effect with less work. I got to learn a lot about the pen tool though, so I think this project was a success.

This project helped me convey how much these people mean to me in a more personal, nonverbal way. I was able to make people happy, which is important, but for some specific stickers I got to relate myself more with the friend I was giving it to. For example, my sticker for my friend Charlotte. Charlotte is graduating this year, and I have spent the last 2 years designing sets with her, and the amount of joy and passion that it has brought to my life is immeasurable. I wanted to give her something before she left for college, and so this sticker is the culmination of a lot of aspects of our friendship. She is going to school for architecture, so I included buildings and some blueprints and a ruler. She has curly hair, so I gave the goose curly hair. She was a flyrail operator, so I added a flyrail. And to represent our time together, I included one of the sets that we designed together, and I made her into a goose. This project gave me a reason to think about my friends and how much they mean to me in a way that I’m not very used to, and I’m glad I did.

This project was such a struggle for my indecisive self, but it was such a good way to build and implement my illustrator skills. Getting to create a physical product was also very cool.

Music

Movies often contain music in the background, called a score, which sometimes includes short transition music in between scenes. We were given this project so that we could explore Protools and learn how to mix with it, but it also gave us the chance so create different experimental music pieces.

We started this project by learning all of the ProTools basics, and then created the file. The rest of the project was free since the purpose was experimentation, so I kind of just ended up playing around with the different instruments. I tried to draw inspiration from different places though, so one of my songs is based on my little pony.

I was inspired by the children’s show, My Little Pony, and the Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks movie for the last two interstitials on this track. The first two had no inspiration, and were just the result of me trying things out, and I think it kind of shows.

I am most proud of the composition I achieved on the third interstitial, as that part of the track is something I’d actually enjoy listening to outside of class. I was able to build depth that I had never been able to achieve before, and the notes played by the bass aren’t just the same notes as the guitar in a different octave. Instead, they are completely different notes, yet they don’t sound completely terrible, which I am really proud of, since I figured out how to do so on my own.

I most value the insight it gives me into how the music I listen to could actually be made, and I also value the slight knowledge I gained on harmonies.

I was really proud of myself for this project because this interface is so complicated. I’ve also never really considered music as a medium to express yourself, or at least my self, so getting to experience it was so fun. I also ended up really liking my 3rd transition piece, and it sparked my interest in more music experimentation in the future.

Animation

In Animation, during the narrative quarter, we focused on creating characters and practicing animating stories. We spent less time on the quality of the story and more on the techniques that were used to create the projects. It was really hard for me to pin down exactly how I wanted my puppet to look, and I also struggled a bit with managing a team. But I am definitely most proud of my work in this class. I’d like to thank M.r Cho for being so helpful with all of the projects, as well as my group mates for the narrative animation, who are all insanely talented.

Character Bio

Our first project was to create a character. Mine originally started off as a greek mythology inspired character, based on Hebe, the goddess of youth, but ended up evolving into a sort of jedi character in a dystopian cyber-world. I tried to keep at least some of the greek draping though. After our character was finished, we were then supposed to make a posable puppet of that character, which I was super excited about. I think it ended up turning out really well.

Puppet Walk Cycle

After creating the puppets, both digitally and physically, we used stop motion as well as digital animation to create a walk cycle for the character, and then combined those 2 into 1 video. I am really proud of this one, becuse we got to use after effects to create it, and this project really helped me get to know the application.

Lip Sync Animation

The next project was to learn how to lip sync our animations with an audio. I decided to use a clip from “One Night in Bangkok” from the chess musical, so the lip sync visuals are also inspired by that. The process for making this assignment was so different from all the ones before it. We first had to draw the character, who barely moved, and then we had to draw different mouth shapes for the different sounds, then we had to switch between the mouth shapes super rapidly, using after effects. I wanted to capture the bored and matter of fact way of talking that you hear in the song, and so the facial expressions I chose were supposed to reflect that. This process was so tedious and frustrating, but I like the final product.

Visual Narrative Animation

Our final project in the narrative unit was the group narrative animation, which was all frame by frame digital animation. I got to work with an amazing group of people. Serenna B, Tyler B, and Albert K. Our narrative follows the story of a cat named Greeble, and his journey to another world, where he meets Ron the fish, who teaches him empathy.

I was really proud of this project. Timing was really hard, but I was the one managing everybody, so I at least could make a bunch of spreadsheets and hope it all happened. We also had to source a ton of sound effects for this project, which was hard because they had to be royalty free. So we got to learn that. I really like how this animation turned out. you can definitely see where the art style changes because different people worked on different things. ButI believe that is part of the charm. Thank you to all my group mates, and thank you to Mr. Cho. Amazing project.