Narrative 1

Narrative 1, or Visual Narrative, is a Freestyle project where we visually communicated character and plot through a short story written in English, and a Narrative Illustration in Design based off of the story. We also continued to use and learn programs such as Adobe Illustrator, ProTools, and equipment such as Wacom Tablets.

The assignment in English was to write a short story, which I had a great time doing.

To record the audio version, I used my portable recording device in the Freestyle studio, and then edited out mistakes in Protools, and also added sound effects and ambient noise to make it more effective.

Digital Media Illustrations

My Geometric Light Cover is entitled Cowboy Lizard. For it, I decided to draw my Bearded Dragon, Phoenix, wearing a cowboy hat, because I thought it would be funny. The other design is just a cowboy hat with “YEEHAW!” written under it. I valued this project because even though I had already been using Adobe Illustrator in Design class, I’d never done anything in it which would be made into an actual physical object. 

Designing something with very specific parameters so that the pieces would be able to fit together as a 3D object, and that would work as a laser cut image was somewhat challenging, although it didn’t take me much time to do. I created my lizard head, hat, and text with the pen tool, and turned them into symbols which I placed on the shapes on the artboard. I also edited a part of the outside to make it look like a cricket that the lizard is trying to eat. 

I’m pretty happy with the results, although on one of the faces of the light cover the hat didn’t fully laser cut, so it didn’t pop out, and in some places the lines may have been too close together to be effective. If I had to do this project again, I would make a design that would work better with the laser cutter, with fewer and less complex lines. Also, the text didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped, and next time I would make it bigger and probably choose a sans serif font instead. 

For the Illustrator project, we had to use what we have learned so far about Illustrator in order to create something such as a patch, stickers, or a t-shirt. I decided to design something to put on a sweatshirt using an iron-on vinyl. After some brainstorming, I ended up choosing to draw a Long Furby saying “Eat the Rich!” based on some doodles I had done earlier in my sketchbook. In late 2018, my friend, Lia Tsur decided to undertake the project which we had seen circling around the internet for a while: making a Long Furby. A Furby, as you may know, is a children’s toy which shot to popularity in the late 1990s. In recent years, youth on the internet have taken to customising and lengthening Furbies, with faux fur and doll armature. Lia and I have made two Long Furbies, Terrold Frumple Dumple “Boogaloo” Gilbert, and Eggward “Electric Shimp” Gilbert, to represent me and Lia respectively. In this Illustration, I depicted a version of Terrold Frumple Dumple “Boogaloo” Gilbert, with the addition of arms, saying the slogan “Eat the rich,” to express a distaste for class disparity. These elements together are a comedic juxtaposition which contrasts the mass produced, capitalistic nature of Furbies, and the online culture which have taken them as their own and repurposed them as pieces of art. 

Throughout this project, I valued utilizing my Illustrator skills which I have gained in Design and Digital Media class to do an assignment with a lot less restrictions, where I could basically do whatever I wanted. I had a lot of fun, and it’s pretty cool that the end result is a physical object which I can wear.

Design

In my short story, the protagonist, Banjo, struggles with choices she has made in her life which have isolated her from other people around her. Since moving away from her family, she has tried her very best to be completely independent from others, which has left her lonely and sad, and missing her old friends. The story opens on a train at night, which is also the scene I drew most inspiration from for this illustration. For me, public transit at night feels eerie and otherworldly. It’s separate from everyday life. It’s a time for reflection and melancholy. Banjo has been going around on the train for almost two hours as the first paragraph opens: “The train felt like a shipping container, windowless and empty, except lit with bright fluorescence and accompanied by half-robotic, half-human voices…” I chose this scene to illustrate because I feel it captures the mood of the story more than any other. 

To create this illustration, I first brainstormed animals that symbolise my main character. The platypus head represents Banjo’s isolation from, the people around her, since platypi are known for being elusive  the frilled neck lizard frill shows anger, the dog legs are for impulsiveness, the butterfly wings show her free spirit, and finally the tortoise shell is for her contemplativeness. I selected reference images for each one, and traced them in Adobe Illustrator while also assembling them into one creature. I used gradients and transparency to add interest and make it look more real. I chose a color palette from a Pantone color book, for both the background and the foreground. To illustrate the background, I used a photo of a train interior for a reference and used my knowledge of perspective and the pen tool to draw it in Illustrator. I added a night sky, stars and planets to further show the mood of the scene.