November 2021 – January 2022
Introduction
For this quarter, we focused on our Visual Narrative Projects. We wrote a short story in English which ended up tying into our Design and Digital Media class. In Digital Media, we produced our short stories, adding sound effects as well as designing a cover for the Freestyle SoundCloud page. For our Design class, we took 5 characteristics of our character from English and turned them into a hybrid animal, as well as made a background using our knowledge of perspective drawings. We also made color pallets to improve what we know about color theory.
I enjoyed the Narrative Projects because of how all of my classes at Freestyle came together to create a lot of fun projects. I can’t wait to use what I have learned from this quarter and use it in the next projects to come.
Short Story
Coming up with what to write was one of the most challenging things for me. I am not much of a writer, so I spent a lot of time sitting with my friends coming up with different characters and what their personalities could be.
Eventually, I came up with the idea of writing a story about a grumpy old man, Bartholomew, who comes across a magical pet that he realizes he needs in his life, making him more cheerful. I wish I could have come up with a story with more depth, but nevertheless, I am happy with the outcome. Below is my story, “The Pet.”
“The Pet”
Bartholomew B. Butts was the old guy you would steer away from. One could feel his piercing eyes glare at you and judgmental frown from miles away. Whenever you would walk by his rundown house, you could see weeds overflowing from the cracks in the sidewalk, the crooked windows and fences breaking the modern surroundings, and the roof slowly sliding off the foundation. He was a simple man, with crooked eyeglasses, and corduroy pants, always paired with a worn-in sweater. Bartholomew lived a methodical life, every day was the same boring routine. Dark coffee, sitting in traffic, going to work, grading papers, tv dinners, and restful sleep. This pattern satisfied the old man, but deep down he knew that he couldn’t keep this up for much longer.
He was on edge today, as he burnt his tongue earlier in the morning. The traffic seemed louder than usual, and the blaring noises around him kept interrupting his thoughts. He peered out his dirty car window, looking at his surroundings. Tall buses, short cars, smog floating throughout the city, and then he saw something. Out of the corner of his eye, there was a flash, it was quick, but it was there. He looked around trying to get a glimpse of what he saw. And then he saw it. It was a small little animal, flying around and digging through the trash. He stared at it in amazement. Bartholomew has never seen this dog-like creature before. It was so tiny, so energetic, the complete opposite of him. As he started to try and get a closer look, it disappeared. Bartholomew looked around, desperately trying to find this unique animal, but it was long gone. Traffic started to clear up and he was forced to continue his routine. At work, he couldn’t concentrate. Even his soft-spoken students noticed that their dreary professor was more wired.
As the final bell rang, he rushed out of his classroom and got in his car. He was no longer starry-eyed from this morning and started his routine home. On his way back, he noticed something he’d never seen before. Just a few blocks away from his home, was a cheery yellow pet store. “Pets Dot Inc” the sign read. As if in a trance, he walked in the store, deep down hoping he would come across something as magical as what he saw earlier that day. He looked around with little hope, he saw it.
“Welcome to Pets Dot Inc, how can I help you?” asked the worker, snapping Bartholomew out of his daze. Without saying a word, he wandered over to the creature. “Box Germ” read the sign. The Box Germ was so animated and spirited, it made it seem like Bartholomew was from a black and white movie. He whipped around to face the worker standing there.
“This, um, Box Germ, is it? I think I would like to take it home.”
“This little guy?” they asked and they took the Box Germ out of their cage for him to hold, “He’s a troublemaker, he escaped this morning, but it looks like he likes you.”
Bartholomew looked up in surprise. Could it be the same one he saw this morning? Before he could give this coincidence another thought, the Box Germ reached out and licked him on the cheek. He laughed, a hoarse one as if he hasn’t laughed in a while. A few minutes later he was walking out with the Box Germ pulling ahead on his shiny new leash. When they reached his creaking house, he nervously picked up the Box Germ. Bartholomew hasn’t had company over in a long time, even if it was just a pet.
He walked in with his new pet in his arms. The Box Germ leaped out and immediately started to take in its new surroundings. He walked around carefully checking out the scenery. Loose change has been thrown on tables, months’ worth of old newspapers, and freshly brewed coffee sitting on the kitchen counter.
“Welcome home,” Bartholomew mumbled mostly to himself. His new pet jumped onto the couch and after a few minutes of scratching at the old patchwork cushions, he laid down, his large tail hanging off the edge. The house seemed to roar and expand with every new step the Box Germ took as if it was adapting to Bartholomew’s new roommate. Bartholomew hesitantly sat down next to the Box Germ, trying to adjust to these new conditions. He reached for a newspaper, continuing to his normal routine. A snore erupted from the Box Germ. Bartholomew’s face softened. He gently took a piece of the newspaper and draped it over his new friend.
We also had to record ourselves reading our narrative story and adding sound effects to keep the listener engaged. I had a lot of trouble doing this assignment because Pro Tools is not my strong suit, but I had fun picking out sound effects to find to use throughout the story. Designing the cover for this story was a little bit difficult for me because I could not come up with an idea I liked, but in the end, I think it is fitting to the story. Below are some behind the scenes from editing my short story and designing the short story cover.
Illustrations
In Digital Media, we started to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator, an online drawing program. I had started to learn how to use Illustrator in Design before we started to use it in Digital Media, so I was excited to start new projects. I decided to design some stickers for this project, but coming up with an idea was difficult.
I had a hard time thinking about what to do for this project and started off by thinking about what I usually draw. I am all over the place when I am drawing, so I was kind of stuck. I knew I wanted to do something involving my friends because they make up a huge part of my life. After drawing a few things I saw around my room, I saw the bouquet of fake flowers I had in a tea can. My friends and I always get tea together, so I began to think about my friends and flowers. Some of my rough sketches include a picture frame with vines and flowers wrapping around it, a guitar with flowers coming out of the hole, and a volleyball acting as a flower pot. I really liked how my rough sketches came out and started making a list of all my close friends, objects that reminded me of them, and their favorite flowers. I thought this was a cool concept because to people who do not know the meaning of them, it would look like a bunch of random objects with flowers on them to make everything look overgrown. The “centerpiece” would be a bouquet of all these flowers representing me because my friends make up a huge part of who I am.
I really like how these stickers turned out, and I am really glad I was able to represent my friends and myself in the way I had planned.
For this project, I created stickers of flowers in or around objects. The story behind this is that I wanted to incorporate my friend’s favorite flower and something that reminds me of them to create a sticker that I would later be able to give to them. I had a lot of fun using and strengthening my Illustrator skills to create these, but one problem I faced was that I was making the stickers on a larger scale than they would be printed, so tiny outlines on the bigger version would take up more than I wanted when I shrunk it down. In the end, I think I was able to fix this problem, however, I did not think about how tedious it would be to cut out all of my stickers.
Music Production
Producing music was a new concept for me, but I am really glad I had the opportunity to pair up with a partner and try it out. Our task was to pick a song and change the lyrics to make a parody, that we would later record ourselves singing. We also learned how to extract the original lyrics from a song to make our own karaoke version. I and my partner Amanda decided to make a parody of the song “Our Song” by Taylor Swift. Our version is called “Our Sus” and is about the game that blew up over quarantine, Among Us.
We had some trouble extracting the audio from the song due to the type of instruments the song had, so in the end, we ended up finding an already made karaoke version to use. I was really nervous about recording the song, but we brought some friends along to sit in the studio with us when we recorded, which helped settle my nerves and brought in a lot of laughs. We also added in some sound effects from the game to give it a little more character. I had a lot of fun with this project overall.
For the Parody Song project, I worked with Amanda Jernigan. We did a parody of Taylor Swift’s “Our Song.” Our parody is called “Our Sus,” and is about Among Us. Amanda and I always make among us related jokes and it is a big meme online, so we thought it would be an easy topic to write about because of how big the game is. This is a good parody because we not only changed the lyrics to fit the theme but also added in sound effects from the game. I had a fun time making this project because I was able to improve my skills with Pro Tools. I have found Pro Tools a difficult application to use, but I feel a lot better using it now. This is very different from any other editing from class because we had to overlap our vocals with the song. In the end, I had a lot of fun doing this project, and hope we have more group projects in the future.
Design
Learning Illustrator
During the Narrative unit, we started to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator, which is now probably my favorite Adobe resource. We started off with learning how to use the pen tool, by tracing a rubber duck and adding our own background. I really struggled with the pen tool at first because I did not understand how to maneuver it in a way to make it work. Next, we used Illustrator to learn how to draw linear perspective, which is one of my favorite things to draw. In middle school, we would have projects that required linear perspective so I was excited to strengthen my knowledge of it. Then we started a bigger project. Our task was to create our room in Illustrator using linear perspective. I had a lot of fun getting to draw my room because it is something that I was used to, however, I had some problems with time management because there are so many elements in my room. I like how it turned out, but looking back I know I can do better now and I can’t wait to explore that in my free time.
Narrative Creature
Once we were more confident with using Illustrator, we started our main narrative project. We took our characters from our English class and made a list of characteristics they had. With those, we found five different animals that matched those personality traits and started to brainstorm how to mash them all together to create a hybrid animal. I was still not as confident with the pen tool when we started this project, so I fell behind and was self-conscious about my progress. Everyone in my class was so supportive and helpful throughout the whole process and I am really happy with the results. We started designing our creatures before moving on to the final product.
For my creature, stubbornness is represented by a turtle’s shell, wise by an elephant’s trunk, angriness by the body of a spiky pufferfish, being old by long mantis legs, and passive-aggressiveness by the puffy tail of a squirrel. I combined the names of each of these animals to create the name of my creature: The Pufftle Squirantis.
I had a lot of fun designing my narrative background, but I had some trouble staying on top of my work and finishing on time. I was out sick when we started this project so working at home and alone made it difficult for me to keep working on it and coming up with new ideas. In the end, I like really like how my final project turned out, even if I had to rush to finish it. Below are some progress checks I have saved along with the final project.
Illustrator was my favorite thing I have learned so far at Freestyle. I loved being able to draw linear perspectives digitally and I am so excited for my next project with Illustrator.