Welcome to my Narrative 2 page! Here you will find my short story entitled Puddles and Whale A Strange Case Indeed. The main characters of this story, Puddles and Whale, are loosely based off of my friend Nick and I as to why we both appear on the cover of the book. My short story is a comedic mystery using absurd comedy and slapstick humor to portray the characters as charmingly clumsy yet still capable of doing their job.

In English, we read Rhinoceros by Eugéne Ionesco, which was a comedic existentialist play as well as read a few other short stories. I was influenced by the fact that most of what we read in class were comedic pieces to write my story as a comedy.

In Design, we created our book jackets. It took me a while to figure out a theme and a color scheme for my cover, but I eventually settled on black and white as it was clean and served the "mystery" part of the books genre. Rather than illustrating my cover, the majority of the elements are photographs that I edited to appear as though they had been painted or drawn.

Finally, in WebAudio, I created this website. The design using the binder paper background and the handwritten font was heavily influenced by the character's jobs as private investigators. I wanted the website to almost look as if it was a notebook that was being used by the characters. I created the background in Adobe Illustrator, and designed the website using Adobe Dreamweaver.

Copyright © 2015 Julianne Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

Puddles and Whale: A Strange Case, Indeed

I was dozing. Everything was well and good in sleepy London. The rain pounded dully on the roof, slowly lulling me deeper and deeper into sleep. A sharp banging and a shrill voice suddenly assaulted my ears, pulling me out of my dream-like state.

“Puddles? Puddles, do you hear that?” I shook the sleeping figure next to me. Squinting at the clock, I slowly made out the numbers shining through the darkness: three fifteen in the morning. Who would be banging on our door at three fifteen in the morning?

“What is it?” She groaned, sitting up and turning on the light. We both winced at the sudden brightness that filled the room. The banging came again, this time sounding more urgent. “Not it,” Puddles said, before curling back up under the blankets and closing her eyes.

“That’s not fair!” I protested. “You can’t just do that!”

“Tough luck,” she mumbled. I rolled my eyes and fumbled out of bed, pulling on a robe and my slippers.

I stumbled out of the bedroom and headed downstairs.

“This is not what I signed up for,” I grumbled to myself. Ever since I was little I had had the dream of becoming a detective and solving the murder mysteries I had read about so often. That dream was cut short when I didn’t make it into the police academy, so I picked my life up, moved to London, married Puddles, and together we became Private Investigators. I still got to do all the detective work I had always dreamed of but on my own accord. Life was good, except when prospective clients start banging on your door at three in the morning in the middle of a storm.

It was dark and stormy outside and I could barely see in the dimly lit apartment. I stepped down onto the last stair, but grossly overestimated the height it was at and promptly fell down the rest of the way onto the floor.

“Goddamn it,” I shouted. Standing up and rubbing my back where it had hit the edge of the stair. I briefly glared upstairs, flipping the bird in the general direction of the bedroom before going to open the door.

I only got a glimpse of the young woman standing on the doorstep before I was swiftly punched in the jaw. The rest of her body followed her hand and she fell flat on her face in the doorway.

“Fuck!” I cried. I moved my jaw around in its socket, trying to gauge the damage done. “What the hell are you doing here at, three-fifteen in the morning?”

She pushed herself off the floor finally allowing me to get a good look at her. Her brown hair was dripping wet as was the rest of her.

“I’m sorry! I… I reached up to knock the door because I thought you didn’t hear me, and you just opened the door, and I punched you, I’m so sorry!” She said, eyes pleading. “I didn’t know where else to go!”

“It’s okay,” I muttered, still nursing the sore spot on my chin. “Just… Come in and I’ll wake up Puddles. Tell her to make some tea.”

“Thank you so much,” she sighed. I gestured for her to follow me into the sitting room down the hall.

“Take a seat, I’ll be right with you.” I gestured, vaguely, to the room, not really caring where she ended up.

I trudged back upstairs, throwing open the bedroom door and beginning the search for real clothes.

“So what’s up?” A voice sounded. I turned and glared at Puddles, sitting up in bed.

“I hate you,” I growled.

“Nah, you could never,” she smiled. “So who has been banging on our door in the wee hours of the morning?”

“It’s some young girl. Probably here about her boyfriend. It’s not like I can refuse to let her in and at least hear her case. No, you had to forbid me from doing that and now look where that’s gotten us.”

“I only did that because you would get mean and we were losing clients,” she stated, calmly. I glared silently at her. She was doing everything she could but I couldn’t help but get annoyed when she was right. She climbed out of bed and padded over to where I was standing. “I know you get frustrated with these cases, but we need the money.”

I sighed deeply. “I know. Let me finished getting dressed, can you go make some tea?”

“Absolutely,” she replied, squeezing my arm reassuringly before heading downstairs.

I had just finished getting dressed when I heard a large crash and almost maniacal laughter. Rolling my eyes, I laughed quietly to myself. Puddles had an accident in the kitchen every three days, and judging from the sound of things, she had pulled all the pots and pans out of the cabinet again.

Knowing she’d be fine I headed back towards the living room, carefully walking down the stairs.

“Okay,” I started. “Let’s ta-” I stopped midsentence as I was greeted by an empty room. Suddenly fuming with rage, I turned and barged down the hall, calling out to my partner.

“Puddles? Puddles! Where did our client go? I left her in the den for two minutes and now she’s gone. She barges into our apartment at three in the fucking morning and then just disappears. Honestly! What kind of person-” I was cut short again as I turned the corner and saw the young woman, arms full of pots and pans, standing in the middle of the kitchen next to Puddles. “Oh my- I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “I probably should’ve waited until you were open. I just wasn’t sure what else to do.”

“It’s okay, we’re up now anyway, right?” Puddles glared at me. I shrugged and flopped down in a kitchen chair, no longer caring about whether or not we got this case.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “I’m up so I may as well just hear what you have to say.”

Our client suddenly became quite shy. “It’s… God. this sounds so trivial. It’s my boyfriend.”

A clipped laugh escaped my mouth before I could stop it. I immediately regretted it as I watched the young woman’s eyes start to well with tears.

“You don’t understand,” she choked out.

“Don’t understand?” I laughed. “I don’t think you know how many girls we get in here a day, asking for us to follow their boyfriends or husbands. Trust me, he’s probably cheating on you.”

“Hey!” Puddles yelled, banging the lid of a pot onto the counter. Startled, I quickly focused my attention on her. My eyes met her steely glare and I felt my cheeks grow hot. “Can’t you see she’s upset?” She forced out through gritted teeth. “You could at least try and be a little more sensitive. I know it’s early and you’re tired, but come on.”

“No, it’s okay, I understand why he’s frustrated,” the woman reassured. She turned to me. “You have every right to be upset and I feel incredibly guilty for barging in on you and punching you in the face, but please, just hear me out.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. I wasn’t happy, but I knew I just had to deal. I quickly began to run my fingers through my hair, trying to tame the mess it had become during the night.

“Stop that,” Puddles whispered, gently taking my hand. “You look fine.” I smiled up at her, grateful for her presence as she patted my head.

Suddenly our client began to cry uncontrollably. Puddles and I looked at each other before springing into action. I grabbed a chair, and gently pushed her into it, while Puddles filled a mug with tea and shoved it into her hands. Slowly, she began to calm down again.

“I’m sorry,” she hiccuped.

“It’s okay,” Puddles said, laying a reassuring hand on her knee. “Why don’t you start out by giving us your name.”

She nodded and wiped away her tears. “My name is Rebecca White,” she began shakily. “I’m twenty-four years old and I live here in London, England.”

“Nice to meet you, Rebecca,” Puddles said. “Now, why don’t you tell us why you’re here?”

“I’m here because my boyfriend, Lucas, has been missing now for three days, I think.”

“Why haven’t you filed a missing persons report with the police?” I snipped. This sounded like a case for the local police, and not a couple of P.I.s.

“Because I know he’s not missing. He still talks with me, but he’s just disappeared.”

“What do you mean he still talks to you?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

“He still texts and calls almost every night, but he won’t tell me where he is or if he’s ever coming home. I’m scared for him, and I don’t know why he’s doing this.”

“Okay. Has he ever done anything like this before?” Puddles inquired.

“No,” I shook my head. “Never. And we’ve been together for almost three years now. I miss him terribly and I’m very worried about him.”

“We’ll do our best to find him. For now, just tell us everything you can about your time with him, any possible enemies, possible locations we can find him at, his mobile phone number. Details like that will help us find him.”

I nodded in agreement with Puddles. However, as she began to question and gather information from our client, I felt my eyelids become heavier and heavier.

I don’t know how long I was asleep before I felt Puddles tapping my face.

“Whale,” she said. “Rebecca is done, you need to wake up now.” I groaned loudly, grabbing her hand and lifting my head up off the back of the chair. “Morning, sleepy-head,” she laughed before helping me up out of the chair.

“I’m fine,” I grumbled, shaking her off. “I’m going to make some coffee.” I hesitated a moment before pulling her in for a long hug. “Thanks for taking this one on, trooper,” I whispered. If there was one thing I had learned from this whirlwind of a night, it had been that she’d always have my back no matter the circumstances.

“Only for you, loser,” she whispered back. I pulled back and smiled at her before trudging over to make some coffee.

By the time Rebecca had left, I had two cups of coffee ready to go for Puddles and I.

“So,” I started handing her the steaming mug. “Tell me about this case.”

She smiled slyly over the edge of her cup as she took a sip. “It’s going to be a good one. Boyfriend disappears one night, without a word, but continues to call his girlfriend? This is going to be the case, Whale, I can feel it.”

Copyright © 2015 Julianne Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

In Design, we learned how to use InDesign to create our book covers on a premade layout. It took me a while to settle on a look and a color scheme for my cover, but finally settled on black and white because it created a clean, polished look. I chose my font to look somewhat like a handwritten cursive so that I could continue with the theme of making it seem as though the characters themeselves were creating the piece. I opted to use photographs as the images for my cover as I felt they presented cleaner than something I illustrated. I used not only myself as a model, but also my friends Nick Dockery, and Jane Kuszmaul. After the shoot, I chose to edit the photos to make them black and white, and add Photoshop filters to make them seem as though they were drawn or painted. What was most important to me during the process of creating this piece was making it look as professional as possible, and making it something people would pull off the shelves if it was in a bookstore. I believe I achieved this goal to the best of my ability, and managed to create an aesthetically pleasing book jacket. To view my book jacket, click on the image to the right.

Copyright © 2015 Julianne Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

For our surrealism project, we were required to learn how to take HDR photos and incorporate that into our piece. For my surrealist piece, I chose to portray how people expose themselves through their words whether in a diary, journal, or spoken. My HDR element was my friend Sebastian Marulanda's hands set on top of his notebook. I then made that photo black and white in order to highlight the more important parts of the piece. I used paint and water colors to create the blood drips that I then added to the pages of the notebook, expressing how people pour their hearts into their words, and are often exposing themselves in a very vulnerable way. Finally, I used the text tool to put strong, meaningful words into his hands in a swirling pattern, making it seem as if they are swiriling around in his mind. I chose to make the words red as well to go along with the theme of being exposed and vulnerable. For this project, the entire piece was shot in Camera RAW and put together in Adobe Photoshop.

Copyright © 2015 Julianne Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

In WebAudio we were required to create a book trailer for our short story. For this trailer, I used photographs in 3D space that had been edited in Photoshop to get the effect that I wanted. I initally struggled with getting the lightening flashes I wanted as I was trying to use an effect from the Effects & Presets panel. However, after looking up a tutorial, I realized that I could create that effect using a white solid and changing its opacity. As for the audio, I found royalty free music on YouTube and used that as my background music. The narration is credited to my friend Nick Dockery, whom the character, Whale, is based off of. I wrote the script and then brought him into the studio one day at lunch to have him record it. I initially had problems because the audio quality of his narration and the quality AfterEffects was playing it at didn't line up, but I managed to fix that. I edited the narration audio using ProTools in order to have it line up with the changing of scenes in my trailer. I created a total of 5 different compositions in order for my trailer to be completed to the standard I held it at.