Introduction
During the visual narrative unit we worked in english to create a flash fiction story. From there, we took our main character and created an animal in Illustrator. Design made me grow creatively and not shy away from my imagination. Creating a creature from other animals was a challenging experience but it was quite rewarding in the end. In Digital Media we produced music, and used Illustrator to create designs that would eventually become real products we could touch. This unit overall helped me discover more of myself and push myself towards my innovative side. I valued what this unit taught me because I expanded my mind in ways that I couldn’t of before coming to Freestyle.
Story
illustrations
Over the course of the narrative one unit I created lots of illustrations both in my Design class and in Digital Media.
exquisite corpse
After learning Adobe Illustrator we were tasked with creating one illustrator with certain parameters. We worked individually and we not allowed to look at each others drawings. At the end, Mr. Florendo put our drawings together.
illustrator project
In Digital Media we were tasked with creating an illustration that can be turned into a real life product. My inspiration in this project was to connect this illustration to my flash fiction in English. Since I am very passionate about fashion I decided to create a design that would go onto a shirt. I chose to draw a frog because in my short story the main character is a frog. I first looked at lots of drawings of frogs to get some inspiration of how I wanted to draw the frog. I decided that I wanted to create a cartoon version of a frog. I now understand how much effort goes into creating shirts. There is a lot of trial and error and revision that went into my illustration. I learned that I really love creating graphics to put onto t shirts. It was a very fun process and I would love to do it again with a different design.
music production
In Digital Media we were given the assignment to create a parody song by our teacher Mr. Florendo. My friend had the idea of doing one of her favorite songs, Staceys Dad. It is about a person who has a crush on their friends dad but we changed the lyrics for it to be their friends mom. This process was really exciting and entertaining. I can’t sing very well but it made the song overall better because its not supposed to be a real song, the funnier the better. This process was quite challenging when we put the audio into Pro Tools and began editing it. We had to take out some clips and replace it with other takes to make the song better. In some of the audio we were laughing we had to replace it with clips where we weren’t. It was difficult but in the end it was worth it listening to the outcome.
design
Narrative creature
artist statement
My story is about a frog called Jules. She struggles with her sense of identity due to her mom leaving her at a young age. She wants to accomplish everything including a leaping race just in the hopes that when her mom comes back, she will be proud of her. Although she is very talented and tenacious she loses one of her legs during a practice and is no longer able to compete. She is filled with a sense of sadness and a hopeless feeling. Later on the competition starts and even with her not being able to compete she still wants to cheer on her teammates. She goes down to the water bank and everyone starts staring at her and berates her with questions about her accident. She quickly leaves and falls to the floor. Rain starts to pour down on her so she picks herself up and takes shelter under a leaf. Her mom comes back and apologizes for leaving her. I wanted to capture this scene as she looks forward to the audience/her mom.
I first compiled characteristics I wanted to include within the different animals. My character is confident, yet shy, loyal, strong and energetic. I chose a pelican’s head to represent confidence, a bearded dragon’s body for loyalty, a crab’s pincers for shyness, a rhinoceros horn for strength and a butterfly’s wings for energy. Using a color scheme creator. I placed all of the photos I found on the internet of the animals and started to trace them using the pen tool in Illustrator. I chose my color scheme and created little circles of different shades and tints of those colors. At first it was a bit difficult to mesh the different parts together and look natural but as I worked I just got more used to it. After I finished tracing and putting together the body parts I colored it. I selected my creature and used the live paint tool. I used the circles of color from before and created gradients to add dimension to my project. I would change the amount of detail I put into my workAs a whole I like my creature, but I think I could have added more details to the bearded dragon’s body, more specifically the scales. I think I could have made it more realistic and not as cartoony.
linear perspective
This assignment was given to us to help us become more comfortable with linear perspective. Our assignment was to draw our bedroom in one point perspective. I felt very confident with the outcome of this project as it looked very similar to my room.
narrative character portrait
My character Jules used to play sports until she broke her leg at a practice. She is filled with sadness not being able to play but still wants to cheer on her teammates. She feels conflicted and doesn’t want to leave but also feels guilty for not playing. Her mind is a constant battle feeling guilty and angry towards her mother. She constantly craves her absent mothers validation and to make her proud. This particular scene I photographed is Jules watching the game she is not able to compete at. She sits at the sidelines feeling spectators stare and gossip about what happened to her leg. She has a scowl on her face due those around her staring at her.
It took a long time to set up the lights and angles. The first couple times I tried, there were shadows across my models face and it was too dark and then too light. I put my model in a boot to show her leg being broken. Around her are old trophies showing my character’s successes in the competitions. I put two of the trophies on her side to show that they don’t matter and are not important anymore. I had my model hold a remote showing that she is watching the game. I wasn’t able to go to a park because there are no outlets but I adjusted to shooting in a house. I put my photograph into Adobe Photoshop and used curve and adjustment layers in order to make the photo brighter. I think in the future I would have taken more photos and adjusted the light to make it brighter before having to edit it to much originally.