Narrative 1

This quarter, we did a visual narrative project in all of our Freestyle classes. In English we learned essential fiction writing techniques, and we were allowed to write a short story of our choice. In Digital Media, we recorded these stories with ProTools, and created album art in Illustrator. Finally, in my elective class, Animation, my group and I collaborated on a short narrative animation, where we had the freedom create and tell a short story.

As a Freestyle student, I really valued the creative freedom of the short story project because we were allowed to write about whatever we wanted, instead of being restricted to a certain theme. I really enjoyed creating characters and giving them a unique story of their own, and finally bringing them to life with an animation, or a short story audio. Peer review really help me improve as a storyteller and utilizing all of Illustrator’s features helped me improve as a digital artist when creating the album cover.

For this illustrator project, we were given the creative freedom to design something in Illustrator. We had a variety of choices, like stickers, patches, T-Shirt designs, and even a Moroccan Candle Shade, but I finally decided on a Laser Engraved Night Light. My main inspiration was an anime called Fruits Basket, which is a show I started watching during my sophomore year. As an Animation student, I have been using anime as references for some of my own projects, and Fruits Basket is one of my favorites. I’m quite proud of the design and how the final drawing turned out. I probably spent too long brainstorming to be honest, but I am very satisfied with the outcome.

Finished Digital Drawing
Traditional Sketch

This year, I created a piece of music that was for the Parody Project, which was a project where we could choose any song, remove the lyrics using ProTools, create our own lyrics, and record and edit in Protools. For this project, my friend and I decided to parody Taylor Swift’s song, Fifteen. We changed to the name of the song to Fourteen, and rewrote the lyrics to be more accurate to what high school life is actually like.

The process was fairly simple. We removed the lyrics of the original audio using techniques like using the EQ Plugin to flip the polarity, and nudging the tracks to make them sound more in-sync. Next, we came up with the lyrics, recorded them, and finally edited everything together. The screenshot below is what the final production looked like in ProTools.

Pro Tools Interface

Lyrics

You take a long sigh
And you walk through the quad
It’s the morning of your very first day
You wait in the long line in the bathroom and
Try and stay out of all the clouds of vape
It’s your freshman year
And you’re gonna be here for the next four years
In this hell
Hoping that those senior boys
Won’t talk to you at all, ‘cause there’s a four year age gap
They’re old
‘Cause when you’re fourteen,
No one will tell you they love you
You better believe it
And when you’re fourteen
Only thinking about your homework
Count to ten
Take it in
High School’s hell, but you just have to deal with it ‘cause
You’re fourteen
You sit in class next to some random sophomore
You haven’t made a single friend
They turn to you and ask you
To copy your work
You’ll be out of here as soon as you can
All your friends are going on dates
But you have homework
And you’re feeling like crying
And your mom’s yelling loud
Cause you have a single B
And you’re studying for chem until 2 AM
Until 2 AM
‘Cause when you’re fourteen,
No one will tell you they love you
You better believe it
And when you’re fourteen
And college aps make your head spin around
But in your life you’ll do things
Greater than getting an A in your USHAP class
I didn’t know it at fourteen
When all you wanted
Were work free weekends
Wish you could go back
And tell yourself what you know now
Back then I swore I was gonna graduate someday
But I realized I just don’t have the time
Our physics class gave everything we had
To a test that broke our minds
And we all cried
‘Cause when you’re fourteen,
No one will tell you they love you
You better believe it
And when you’re fourteen
Don’t forget to check Canvas or ELSE
I’ve found time can heal most anything
And you just might find who you’re supposed to be
I still don’t know who I’m supposed to be
At Sixteen
Your very first day
Take a long sigh girl
And take a long sigh as you walk through the quad

In Animation, we have done a variety of projects using different methods such as stop motion or zoetrope animations, but this past quarter we mainly focused on digital animations. This includes a short walk cycle animation, a lip sync animation, and finally the short narrative animation. I really valued the experience I gained in using programs like Photoshop and After Effects, and I would like to thank my peers for all the support kind messages!

Walk Cycle

Below is my walk cycle animation I created with my original character, Etsuko, in Photoshop. The process was very time consuming and I actually ended up restarting because I wasn’t proud of how it looked the first time.

Screenshot of my animation file in Photoshop.

Lip Sync

For this project, we were allowed to choose a song or an audio file to do a Lip Sync Animation to. I decided on Dream Night by Lily Pichu, because I really like it and it’s not copyrighted. I ended up making this animation over 50 seconds long, which was way longer than it had to be, but I really wanted to animate the entire chorus. Overall, I like how it turned out even thought it was very time consuming and it almost felt like I was never going to finish it.

Screenshot of my animation in After Effects. I drew the individual parts in Photoshop, and then edited the video in After Effects.

Narrative Animation

The Narrative Animation was a collaborative project, where we were challenged to create a unique story, design characters, draw backgrounds, to create a 30 second long animation. My group and I struggled to come up with ideas for our story, but we eventually settled on a bittersweet plot, where a character is overcome with nostalgia while remembering a friend they had who they slowly drifted apart from over time.