{"id":306,"date":"2026-02-16T06:16:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T06:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~DariusM\/?page_id=306"},"modified":"2026-06-10T06:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T06:42:07","slug":"narrative-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~DariusM\/narrative-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Narrative 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Section<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is Visual Narrative?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The idea behind Visual Narrative is learning the process of using visuals or other media to tell a story. Through my experience in Digital Media, Animation, and English classes, we learned different tools to help us craft this sort of experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through Digital Media class, I have learned to use tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Audition, Pro Tools, WordPress, and more. These tools are useful to communicate a story without just using text. For example, Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing application, which helps design visual elements of a story. Also, Pro Tools and Adobe Audition can be used to create an auditory experience by enhancing a story with sound effects and music. These skills are valuable for me, especially while I am learning how to write stories in English class. We write Flash Fiction novels, we write about our experiences as a writer, and more to hone our abilities in communication. When telling a story, one needs a good grasp of the English language. In addition to communicating in English, there are other tools to help tell a story. My Animation class taught me specifically how to tell stories through animation. The primary application used in Adobe After Effects, which allows us to create visual effects, advanced movement, and more to tell a story. The greatest example of this is my Visual Narrative Group Project, in which I teamed up with three other people to create a long story animation. Instead of just writing the story down, we could communicate the meaning without having any dialogue. Through these three classes and the various tools taught, I have grown as a storyteller and digital artist, and I expect that my newfound capabilities will assist me later in life when I go into videogame development or a similar field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Section<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Flash Fiction Writing Process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My journey through storytelling in my English class wasn’t smooth sailing. At the start of Freestyle, I had an overall negative association with writing, which let to second guessing while crafting my Flash Fiction. Of course, as I became more invested in Freestyle’s English curriculum, the class managed to heal my, to put it bluntly, “trauma”. At the time, I wasn’t doing the best mentally, so I decided to vent out a dramatized version of my feelings onto the page. While in the end, it sounded alright, the overall message was incoherent. My main inspiration for my flash fiction was a videogame called “Omori<\/a>“, which I related to at the time. The main character, similar to Omori, had an overall sense of hopelessness, to the point where he shuts off the world from everyone else and becomes devoid of any external emotion. For the plot of the story, I settled on a few themes, such as loss of parents and trauma about losing one’s identity. Unfortunately, I didn’t allude to the themes well enough, creating a story that sounds good on paper until the audience tries to decipher what it means. Therefore, an entire semester later, I decided to redo the entire story. I made the theme more apparent while still keeping the “dark” aspect to it to match the previous flash fiction. This time, the theme is about losing one’s parents due to a traumatic fight and the process of grieving and coming to terms with the loss. Afterward, I gave the story to my dad to revise, and he liked it. His main comment though is that the story kind of goes from depressing to horrifying to even more horrifying to somewhat of a conclusion. While that was the aim of the story in the first place, I do agree that it might be a bit too extreme for some audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flash Fiction Audio Production Process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I am quite proud of how the sound effects and music tie into creating an immersive experience. The main idea was for the audio to resemble horror, with a bunch of intense and disturbing music to emphasize the scary parts. I\u2019ve had prior experience creating music in Ableton Live (another music-producing software), so I didn\u2019t have much trouble using Pro Tools. Plus, Freestyle Academy offers so many royalty-free sound effects that it’s hard to even choose the perfect one for each occasion. One difficult problem I faced, however, was making sure the panning of the sounds were accurate to make a more immersive experience, such as making footsteps slowly increase in volume and pan to seem like someone is walking toward the listener. I also used the technique of stacking audio clips together with different panning to make them sound more “natural”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am most proud of how music is used in my project. I solely used the royalty-free songs by Purple Planet given by Freestyle Academy. The variety of music that Purple Planet made is astounding; I mainly used the music inside the Creepy tab to highlight the scary parts of the story. I also added a reverb to all the music tracks to make them more atmospheric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This entire process has given me a new appreciation for audio-only stories. Since there are no visuals, the producer, who in my case is myself, has to make sure that the sound effects and music are as immersive as possible. There is closer attention to detail in elements such as panning and volume, unlike in stories with accompanying visuals, which also help create an atmosphere. In audio-only productions, one can’t fall back on the visuals to create a cohesive story, which I respect a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Flash<\/a>
Click to view OLD Flash Fiction PDF<\/span> <\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Click to view Interactive Flash Fiction Book<\/div>