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The narrative unit was something I was intrigued by when it was announced. First in Digital Media we focused on the use of Dreamweaver, Animate and Illustrator for the Narrative Project. In English, we developed the characters and written story. Finally, we worked through a comic illustration in Design. The Narrative project was used to showcase our work in writing, digital photography, graphic design, audio engineering, and web production by producing a graphic novel, a comic illustration, an animatic and an animation of a story that I wrote.

Animatic

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The graphic novel serves as a storyboard for for the animatic and animation because it allowed us to experiment with different shots and ideas before finalizing our product.

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An animatic is a preliminary version of a movie, produced by shooting successive sections of a storyboard and adding a soundtrack. It is to create a vague idea of that the animation is going to look like.

Doing all of these processes has shown me how stories can be written and portrayed in different ways. Starting with a simple idea from the flash fiction and going through the steps of animation to bring it to life shows the effort and the depth that goes into animation. The graphic novel was used to preview our final idea before putting it all together.

Animation

Like the animatic, I used Adobe Animate to create the final animation piece for the narrative unit. To start the work process for this, I drew out many different parts for each character and turned each piece into a symbol so I could use them later on in the scenes of the story. Of course, to add to the animation, I added different drawn out backgrounds and audio for the character’s environment. Lastly, it was so important to play around with the movement of the stage’s focus on each scene with zooming and panning. The new camera tool was a very big addition to Animate because it allowed for simpler and easier panning, even though there were some glitches.

Illustration

The General

The General Comic Illustration

For this project we focused on the rising action of our graphic novels. We drew out our ideas on regular paper to begin with and then burnished out drawings onto an art board.

Write your reflection on producing a comic illustration

When I was given the task of creating a comic I tried to focus on a good story and creating something I could build on in the future. Once I came up with my story I immediately started to think of what my characters would look like and what my layout would look like for my comic.

Story

The General

When I write, it's always easyist to create a simple idea and build on it. So when I was presented with the prompt to write a flash fiction and found myself struggling for inspiration. I brought together a couple ideas that people put on the board during English and created a Frankestein story.

So I had found my story. All I had left to do was to create my character and fill in what gaps were left. Just one problem, creating a character. Personally, I find characters to be the hardest part of any work I write. Not only do I struggle with characters, but this narrative is one that is so close to me, it felt strange creating a new life to go through it. Who could possibly express this experience in the direct and poignant way I intend? It now seems obvious. Everyone has experienced frustration in one way or another. Whether in a creative pursuit or otherwise, we each feel the struggle and emotion behind any endeavor we are dedicated to. What better way to connect my reader to my story than to place them in the middle of it?