Introduction
Our second official unit at Freestyle asked us, “How well can you visually tell a structured story?”. I found ways to answer this question by using a variety of mediums in all of my Freestyle classes, such as writing a short story in English, doing audio and illustrated productions in Digital Media, and creating original storylines via puppet characters and short animations in Animation. I also learned a variety of modern programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Animate, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Avid Pro Tools, and DragonFrame. We also utilized professional equipment such as Wacom Digital Drawing Pads, lighting equipment, down shooters, and we also learned HTML/CSS when coding our WordPress websites.
This unit taught me the importance of editing and killing your darlings. The increased workload throughout this unit forced me to cut my losses whenever anything wasn’t turning up to my personal perfectionistic standards and the fact I had to refine my work with a wider audience meant I had to learn to take criticism even if it wasn’t always what I wanted to hear. This unit also taught me the importance of seeing other perspectives, because everyone approaches storytelling differently, and it also taught me the importance of workin in a group. Overall, the Narrative 1 unit was far from easy work, but it helped me tremendously and I am sure I will be using what I’ve learned until the end of my time and even after Freestyle.
Story
Our assignment in English this unit was to create a short story. In order to do that though, we gained a repertoire of knowledge of other short stories with the most significant being Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”. After we did a deep dive into other pieces of literature, we built up our story ideas by participating in a lot of character building activities, such as a Character Questionnaire, a character sketch, and a plot map. The plot map I used for my short story and a brief excerpt of my character sketch can be found below.
The inspiration for the short story I wrote was a previous idea I had about someone living in an apocalyptic world where water had become almost non-existent and an inventor who was trying to pitch a machine to bring it back. Originally when I had thought of this idea it was formatted like a Broadway musical, but obviously I had to make some adjustments when I decided to make it a short story for this project. The reason I chose to pursue this story and not one of my more personal projects for this assignment was because it would allow me to learn more and explore the idea more throughly without giving in to being too attached to my ideas. Since this concept was so fresh, it was perfect to be molded into as time went on and we refined it over the course of the project.
After we had written our short story, we were tasked in Digital Media to create an audio production version of our short story. This would require us to use Pro Tools to read out, edit, and add sound effects to create a short audio drama/audiobook version of our story. The value I learned from the writing to the audio part of creating my story was learning the benefits of editing and making needed changes even if it’s hard.
This project changed the way I see audio productions because it allowed me to see the hard work that goes into them and that there are a lot more intricacies to audio engineering than first meets the eye. It let me understand the intersection between audio dramas and acting and how important it is to employ similar practices when creating an audio production while also keeping in mind the quality control that you need to give the illusion that the viewer is experiencing something with only sound. This project allowed me to see something so simple as a much more complex and in depth operation than I would have if I hadn’t done it.
Finally, you can listen to my short story audio production below!
(Transcript version of the audio drama)
Water is the most important thing humans have, but for the city of Torrent, it’s been gone a long time. What was once a prosperous city has crumbled to the will of its own greed. In an eroded, deserted wasteland, a single dome remains. The last of humanity remains here. Guarded by thick panes of glass, they are protected from the mutated pests that run rampant, but here, they are safe. Within this crowded city, a young mechanic hides away.
And in the middle of the town square, a festival began.
Hidden behind the curtains of her festival tent, Piper Petrichor placed her rusty equipment on her workbench preparing for work. Piper peeked outside her station. As people huddled through the town’s annual market festival, it rang to Piper the familiarity of home. The view above her tent, however, indicated otherwise. The scorching desert sun, clouded by polluted haze, only signaled she still had work to do.
Piper clasped her hands together as she called out.
“Assistants!”
Three rusty, robotic creations rolled out in a variety of shapes and sizes. She cracked her knuckles and grabbed a tiny toolbox.
“Today’s the day, I know it.”
Piper and her assistants circled around the centerpiece of her prep-space, her dream machine. The Hydro.
With a simple mixture of common household chemicals, affordable, accessible and clean water would be at all of Torrent’s fingertips.
Piper looked outside her tent again, making eye contact with one of her competitors at the festival. “The Conductor” was his name. As beloved kingpin of Torrent, Piper despised his money-grab scams for a basic necessity. With this, there wouldn’t be anymore of The Conductor’s overpriced oil mix, only real crystalline power. That’s why she’s here after all, once she pitched her project, everything would change.
She would change.
Growing up an orphan, she was always out of place. If this worked, she’d finally belong here. More importantly, if this worked, it’d mean despite the desolation of what laid outside, there’s still hope for her and her people.
While her machine resembled more of a can opener, Piper beamed a confident smile. All that’s left is a bit of faith.
Finishing up her prep, a booming horn and voice shouted out.
“…Our next invention is from Piper Petrichor!”
Piper lifted her machine, placing it on a makeshift wagon. Her assistants huddled beside her as she stumbled out..
A bit of faith. That’s all.
Piper hurried across the forming crowd. Stumbling towards the festival stage, she could barely stand. Out of breath, she looked at the crowd. With a goofy grin, she waved to her people.
The festival’s announcer watched her excitedly wave to her audience.
“Piper! You’ve been drawing up a storm lately, haven’t you?” The announcer squinted his eyes. “Your thousands of letters made that clear.”
Piper didn’t respond to the snarky comment. The announcer stepped aside.
“You have one minute.”
Piper confidently dropped the Hydro from her wagon, unveiling it to the crowd.
“Behold! The Hydro!” Piper threw her arms in showmanship. “As for what it does…”
Piper poured chemicals into the Hydro’s funnel.
“Please work…”
Burning curiosity bubbled through the crowd.
“Please.”
Time ticked, waiting for the machine to produce something, anything. The Hydro fizzled as chemicals sloshed within the machine. Piper prayed a drop of condensation would pour out its handle.
As air fought around the piping, Piper clung to hope.
“Come on, please-!”
“Times up, Petrichor.”
A hazy, cloudy voice echoed across the back of the stage. An alarm went off.
She was out of time.
The disappointed crowd groaned. A familiar tall shadowy top-hatted figure, snuck up behind Piper.
The Conductor.
“I’m afraid he’s right, Piper.” The announcer interjected. “You’re out of your allotted time. Clearly your “Hydro” needs some work.”
The Conductor looked at Piper with a sadistic grin, enjoying watching her fail.
Piper panicked. “Wait! One more minute! My machine works! I’ll prove-!”
The Conductor reached out one of his shadowy appendages, throwing Piper and her machine off-stage. Nobody batted an eye.
Rolling across the rough terrain, Piper’s golden opportunity melted away.
“Now, Conductor! Won’t you show us the usual?”
Piper couldn’t hear another word of this.
Assistants in hand, a thought weathered through her as she stormed off.
She wouldn’t hope for anything ever again.
…The next day was one of depressive solitude. Trapped in her birdcage of an apartment, barred by charred metal and eroding pipes, Piper had lost everything.
That festival was her chance. Her moment!
And now…
Piper locked eyes with her pathetic “Hydro”. It didn’t make a single drop in time. Not one.
Huddling closer towards her machine, she pondered throwing it out. Of course it was hopeless. Torrent hadn’t had water in years, who’d think some random scrappy kid could change anything?
Could anything change?
While Piper mourned, the smallest of her assistants powered up, nudging for her attention.
Piper however, remained unmoving.
The tiny assistant beat repetitively against the machine. Piper looked down.
“Wh-! Hey!”
Piper swooped up the assistant. “You’ll get a concussion, you know.”
Then, her assistant nudged her to look ahead. When she did, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
The Hydro began to sputter and whir. The previous unfinished mixing of chemicals was processing, working. The machine hadn’t failed…
It was only getting started.
Air pushed through the Hydro’s end pipe again. Piper anxiously rushed beside the machine.
As wisps whirled around the pipe like a hurricane, a drop formed and landed onto the counter the machine had been half-hazardly placed on.
She couldn’t believe it.
Piper rushed for her analysis device. It couldn’t be, there was no way it…
With a single reading, a beam of hope shot back in her face.
“Water…”
Water is the most important thing humans have, and for the city of Torrent, it’s been gone a long time. However, with the reckless hopes of a tiny inventor, things might be about to change.
After all, with every storm comes rain.
I grew artistically and technically with this project by enhancing once again my audio skills. I learned how to create audio productions and I now know how to integrate music, sound effects, and vocal performances into one reel. With this I will now have the opportunity to create audio productions of my writing in my free time and be able to use it for any future school or work projects.
The main struggles I encountered with this project was the editing process. It was hard to filter out and actively catch small mistakes especially because my brain processes information really quickly. I overcame these challenges by dedicating careful listening and paying attention to each little detail of the audio in order to get it the best I could within the short time frame.
If I could change anything about my project I would get more actors and likely have adjusted parts of my story to better fit the audio narrative. I think the overall transfer and my fill-ins for certain parts went fine, but it would’ve further added to the production if I had the time to go that extra mile.
I am most proud of my ability to capture certain acting nuances and put in sound design/effects that elevated the story and wouldn’t have been present in just story form. I am proud with the ambience I was able to create with my audio production and hope to incorporate similar ideas and methods in any future productions.
I will use the ideas I learned in this project in future projects or other areas of my life by employing new audio engineering techniques and skills I didn’t have previously. I feel much more confident in Pro Tools especially after this project, and can now more confidently say I can make both music and audio productions in it with relative ease. This will be extremely beneficial for any audio related projects in the future as I will have the skillset to not only create them but to make them at a high quality and at a rapid pace.
Illustration
For this portion of the Narrative 1 unit, we had to focus on creating illustrative elements with Adobe Illustrator. Multiple assets, such as my short story audio production cover, were made in Adobe Illustrator. Other graphics such as my banners were worked on in Adobe Illustrator.
Our first project utilizing Adobe Illustrator was our exquisite corpse project. This project had us split into groups and each take a part of an image that would later connect to became a full picture. I was given what was essentially the head of the drawing. For my image, I choose to base it off the Shadow Play Girls from my favorite show, Revolutionary Girl Utena. I thought they’d be simple enough to get done quickly in the new program and that it’d be fun enough I’d get it done without worrying about whether or not I like it.
The next project we did was the cover for our short story audio production. This was pretty self explanatory and I chose to depict my main character in grayscale with only a simple drop of water and some stars having color, drawing back to the main themes of my story.
The final project we did involving Adobe Illustrator was our personal choice. We essentially got an array of options of things we could produce, such as a mousepad, night stand, and various other physical items. I chose to create a night stand utilizing an important symbol from one of my original stories. I first traced the image in Adobe Illustrator and then Mr. Flo used specific cutting software to cut it onto acrylic which was slotted into a nightstand.
Warriors of Peace Shield (Night Stand)
For our illustrator media project, I decided to create a night stand. This shield/symbol represents an important group in one of my original stories. Since this story is a big part of my life and I have been needing a better light source other than just my lamp, I thought this would be a wonderful way to not only make something I adore physically but to also make something practical I can use in day to day life. The design has 2 of my main characters’ weapons (an axe and a scythe) and the other members’ symbols on the shield. The shield itself is meant to represent the overall person they work under. To create this piece, I originally designed this in Ibis Paint X on my Ipad and then traced the image over with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. Afterwards, Mr. Flo helped create the night stand by using a program called LightBurn which would engrave and then cut out the night stand’s design on acrylic. Then once that was done, Mr. Flo leant me a nightstand light that had a square slot and I placed the night stand design inside.
This project is different from the projects I have done in English and Animation for the Visual Narrative unit because it required me to show an important element of a story with only an object and a representation and thus made me have to focus on a more abstract form of storytelling than something more straightforward. I grew artistically and technically with this project because I got to learn how using illustrator could guide me into creating physical things, an opportunity I will absolutely be using more often now that I know how to do so. Doing this confirmed to me that I am much more adept at making things than I first surmised and learning how printing something like a night stand works makes me feel more confident in doing similar sort of projects in the future. Knowing how everything works and going through the process has made the whole journey much less scary and makes it less anxiety-inducing in the future when it comes to starting these sorts of projects.
I am most proud of the final result of this project, if I must be honest. I feel extremely proud I was able to create something that looks the way my project does and that I now have the ability to create more of these sorts of things in the future. I will use the ideas I learned on this project in future projects or other areas of my education or life in case I ever need to create physical parts for some sort of project. Knowing the existence of this sort of printing software and also how to create these sorts of designs will also appeal to potential clients who might want to see my work on a physical object. This project changed the way I value others’ art because it let me see the work that goes into making something physical and it let me feel honored to be a part of and learn from that sort of process. It made me respect, for example, small business owners who produce these sorts of physical products significantly more. The skill and technical knowledge needed to accomplish their tasks is something I hope to understand and achieve myself more in time.
Reflecting back on the overall differences between being creative with photoshop and being creative with illustrator, I find that photoshop is best for photo editing and pixel based productions whilst illustrator is best for graphic design and vector based productions. I also find them both more adjusted for each of their mediums then my default program of choice, Ibis Paint X, since that is a digital art program and is more oriented towards that rather than photography or graphic design.
Music
Music was also integral to our Narrative 1 unit. In our Experimental Music Project, we learned how to use Pro Tools for music production. We utilized a MIDI keyboard in order to capture the notes we were playing in the program. We also learned the nuances and different settings you can apply to create the effect of different instruments in the program.
My process in working on producing my Experimental Music project was mostly trial and error. We had the choice of either creating a full song or a set of 5 interstitials that’d basically be like little melodies. I chose to do the interstitials because I thought I’d learn more from trying a variety of melodic techniques rather than just one.
You can listen to my Experimental Music Production below!
Bird Song
My inspiration for the music I created was mostly my personal music taste. I enjoy a lot of techno and EDM music so I wanted to use similar instruments in my experimental interstitials. I also enjoy birds, so I thought theming the interstitials around simple melodies would help tie it in with that since birds often sing simple melodies to each other.
The thing I’m most proud of in this Experimental Music Production was that I was able to complete all 5 interstitials. I am also proud I got myself to try a whole new music program and properly use a MIDI keyboard to make music. I had to overcome a lot of new sudden challenges and changes quickly and I’m proud I was able to make something alright despite that.
What I valued about learning how to use virtual instruments for music production was that my new experience will allow me to pursue even more music projects regardless of if they are in Pro Tools or not. I also strongly value that I now know how to make my own backing music tracks in Pro Tools despite not knowing how to play traditional instruments.
My main takeaways about learning how to use MIDI and music production software is that the things I learned using a different program for music production (since I had only used Garageband) will help me with music production in general substantially. Knowing how to properly use a MIDI keyboard for example will help a lot with composing melodies in a simpler fashion without needing to brute force or guess most of the time.
Animation
Our work during the Narrative 1 unit didn’t stop at English or Digital Media though, the same principles were transferred to our elective classes. My elective class, Animation, also had an array of projects for the Narrative unit. From creating a puppet, to animating a walk cycle and a lip sync, and even working on a group animation, all of us had a lot of work cut out for us this unit.
For our first project, we were tasked to create a stop motion puppet out of tape, wire, and various other materials Mr. Cho provided us. We could also bring our own materials from home to create the puppet. Before we could do that, however, we had to design a character (or use a previously made design) and write a short character bio about them. My puppet design was based around one of my most important characters, Eon. His character bio can be found below.
Then, we had to go onto the process of actually creating the puppet. First, we had to create an armature so that the puppet could move it’s joints and limbs, and also so that it’d have a distinct shape. Afterwards, people would sew, glue, or mold clothes and limbs onto their puppet on top of the armature. My final puppet can be found below.
The process did not end at creating our puppet though, our next task was to animate our puppet doing a walk cycle utilizing a similar set-up we used for our stop motion projects back in the conceptual unit. We utilized screws, pegs, and a green screen board to take individual pictures of each of the steps in the walk cycle and then later compiled them in Dragon Frame and then After Effects.
Additionally, we learned how to animate a walk cycle in 2D. We were encouraged to use the same characters we used for our puppets, but not required to do so. The final compilation required us to merge our 2D and Stop Motion Puppet walk cycles together to create a video where both walking animations would essentially pass each other by. My final walk cycle composite can be found below.
Shortly after that project, we were once again tasked to create a digital animation using an art program of our choice (with the recommendation being Photoshop) to make a short lip sync animation. I chose to animate one of my characters again to the song Von Dutch by Charli XCX simply for the fact the song had been stuck in my head and it seemed like it’d be fun to animate to. I created a set of different lip shapes and matched them to the sounds made within the audio in order to give the illusion the character was singing along and saying the words themselves. I drew all the parts of the character in Ibis Paint X and edited it together in After Effects. My final lip sync video can be found below.
Our final project of the narrative unit was probably the hardest we had done yet. We were tasked to get into small groups and together create a 1-2 minute long animation with a storyline within only 5-6 weeks. In order to get through the project, we’d have to work together and all contribute equally to get our work done. This project to me was both the hardest project I’ve done at Freestyle so far but also the one I learned the most from. Being the team leader, it was my job to keep everyone moving and on track throughout the project, however looking back my team’s lack of communication skills ended up having us stressing out a lot more especially as the end of the project neared. While I was tasked as being the main animator, both me and another one of our teammates had to pitch in a lot because we kept running into problems due to us not communicating or being as open as we should about how our progress was in the project.
However, despite all these trials and tribulations, I learned a great lesson looking back on the importance of communication in team led projects and will have to work on tendency to stress out when problems arise in the future. I think since I focused too much on the end result, I forgot to let me and my team breath and thus I will take that mentality into the next project. Overall though, I think the final result is good for what it was, and although I can see a lot of flaws in it, I think the process of it’s creation and it’s mere existence is enough to justify it’s worth. Our final narrative animation can be found below.