Our initial main project during Narrative 2 in English was our research project. As we began the Worldbuiling unit, we read the book “1984” by George Orwell. We participated in various socratics and analysis of the book (and other additional worldbuilding texts like “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas”). Using these core texts as inspiration, we began thinking of original story ideas that we would later “pitch” to the class. We were each put in groups of around 3-4 people, and my group chose to do a Sci-Fi story about a group of galactic colonizers being left to fend for themselves in space. More details on this project will be further down the page. After coming up with our premise, we learned about how doing individual research on various real world subjects could be used to expand our initial story ideas.

Annotated Bibliography

Character Bio

Along with our research project, we began to create characters to flesh out and fill our world. I made various characters for our worldbuilding project, but my most significant contribution was one of our main protagonists, Mika. Her character reference and bio are below.

Outer:

Erratic, unconventional, and outspoken, Mika is the ship’s Nurse Practitioner, though she has a keen interest in bloodwork and disease prevention. One of the first things people note about her is her abnormal way of speaking. Often fluctuating in tone and volume like a springtoy, Mika often startles those who try to even see her for a simple check up. However, as chaos starts to erupt on the ship, Mika does her best to do what she loves most despite the growing tension.

Layer 1:

Mika’s unconventional behavior can be noted in a few key ways. She constantly is fidgeting with something, and always seems as if she’s ready to sprout up into action. She’s hyperactive, bubbly, and strangely so very cheerful even when things are looking more dire than ever. She was a late addition to the ship, only coming on when the previously assigned Nurse practitioner fell ill and thus couldn’t participate. Therefore, she isn’t super close to any of the ship residents and is subtly ousted from the group as a whole. She tries very hard however, to be helpful and fit in by offering assistance wherever she can. Mika is also what some would call “obsessive”. She fixates on certain subjects, things, even people to a degree that some may feel is invasive. She has a hard time processing sensory information, so she’s very keen on touching, proding, and poking at whatever is in her path to truly get an understanding of it. This level of enthusiasm and action however, has a very negative downside of making the people around her feel uncomfortable.

Layer 2:

Mika is used to being alone. Really, it’s how she’s spent most of her life. She was drawn to medicine because she felt that handling people’s care made her feel as if she was connected to them in a more intimate way. Despite how outwardly she seems, she really does want to try to make people feel better, and will try her best to reel it back if she notices someone is upset. However, it’s also hard for her to notice these signs. She often unintentionally pushes buttons or breaks boundaries without realizing, as she isn’t used to people acknowledging her presence at all, so being a key part of life on the ship now means she has to learn about the intense social conventions she had been left out of for a very long time. Mika grew up in a boarding school back where she came from, so she has little connection to her extended family nor any true friends to speak of. She is very, very dedicated to her work, to the point where she will often forget her own needs in order to complete it.

Core:

Mika very badly wants to be treated as a normal person. At her boarding school, she faced targeted harassment from both teachers and students for her strange behavior and fixations, and she has never really learned how to deal with the pain of always being a “freak”. She doesn’t want to hurt people, she doesn’t mean to be embarrassing, she just wants people to understand her, to care for her. If they did, then maybe she’d start to understand how to be a human being after all, instead of constantly pretending to be one.

Surreal Composition

Then, we combined our characters and research to create surreal compositions in photoshop showcasing key moments in our stories. My surreal composition made in Digital Media can be found below, along with my artist statement and photoshop interface.

My surreal composition is focused around my worldbuilding character, Mika, and the surrounding research I did for worldbuilding which was looking into personality theory. Using Photoshop, I used quick start selections, layer masks, opacity blending, blend modes, adjustment layers, and gradient masks all throughout to help bring various different objects together to paint a picture of who my character is in an abstract sense.

My piece relates to my Worldbuilding project because it gives us an insight into Mika’s mindset. On the outside, she is an erratic nurse practitioner who seems to glitch and zip around in conversation. On the inside though, she is deeply wounded emotionally and longs for connection. The main message I am conveying with this piece is that despite how someone looks on the surface, you have to get to know people better in order to get a gauge of their true character.

Elements of my piece that represent my research are varied. I have more overt nods, like including the five factor model and Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development pyramid, which are both psychological theories. However, I also added other nods to my topic, such as a scale to represent the themes of morality our story and my research explored and focused on showcasing various medical elements (pills, heart, etc) to show not only Mika’s dedication to her profession but the topic I gathered from one of my sources which was moral injury which especially impacts doctors. I also included the text “ARE YOU OK?” both as a nod to the song that inspired Mika’s creation and as a way for the viewer to question themselves if she’s really alright. I also sought to give the piece a glitchcore/yamikawaii aesthetic, as those aesthetics focus on themes of portraying health problems with cutesy imagery. I also utilized a figure of a nurse girl to stand-in for Mika and her split feelings. The relationship between my character and research topic complicates relationships in my story world because Mika is likely to be impacted by moral injury throughout the crew’s journey on the ship. Personality theory might also come in handy because not only will it give my group the basis to form each of our character’s morality off, but it can also show how Mika’s resilience and true personality shine through even when her morals are challenged in a realistic, engaging way.

My general reflections about knowing how to create Surreal Compositions in photoshop is that I greatly value the skill of being able to represent abstract ideas visually. I think that I will do similar things for my own personal projects in the future, and I found the process of making my Surreal Composition more fun than I expected!

Upon reflection of making my surreal composition now, I realize I learned a lot about portraying a message with abstract images. I think this is a skill that I will likely carry to many other future projects as it’ll help me quickly test out other visual options rather than putting all of my efforts into solely one.

Worldbuilding Pitch Video

Our final project that stemmed from our worldbuilding project in English was our Worldbuilding Pitch Video. This pitch video essentially served as an overview of our story, who it’d be for, the characters and main world lore, etc. We initially began this process by creating a pitch for the class as a presentation and then using the feedback we’d receive to inform our pitch video. In English we wrote a script, and then we used Digital Media as our path to synthesize our final product in After Effects.

If you’d like to see the pitch video for my group’s worldbuilding story, Proxima, you can click the embed video below.