Introduction

During the Narrative 1 unit we did many fun things there has definitely been growth in both my technical skills and my mindset. At the beginning, I had been approaching projects in the “traditional school mindset” which is: complete work as fast as possible, while meeting all the requirements. At freestyle, projects don’t have strict rubrics or deadlines, and afterwards they are displayed, rather than thrown in the bin. This means that I must put more time and creative thinking into my projects, so that I can be proud to put them on my website. I think my photo haiku, and other early projects could have turned out better if I had spent more time conceptualizing rather than jumping straight into the creating. Now that I have spent a year at freestyle, I am putting more thought into the end goal of my projects. I must take the time to ensure I am creating quality work and conveying the right message. 

At freestyle I have also become far more comfortable learning photo/video/audio editing programs in digital media and animation. Now that using these tools isn’t a worry, I can focus more on creating cool things that look and feel the way I want. 

Specifically, we learned how to use Adobe Audition and Pro tools for audio editing, Photoshop and Illustrator for photo creating visual media and Photoshop, Dragon Frame and Adobe After Affects for creating videos. So here are some of the finished products, that were the culmination of a lot of practice to learn these new tools.

Story

In english class we were tasked with writing a flash fiction. A flash fiction is a short story, that develops the arc of one specific character, through a short and emotional ordeal. For mine I wanted to write about something nautical and pirate-y. I decided to write about a sea monster, to explore the concept of monstrosity or how humans react to encountering an alien. I named the story “Origins” because the twist(ish) is that the monster we learn to identify with is the origin of certain superstitions.

Origins


	Three sailors stumble into the taverna, holding each other and swaying. Clearly they are enjoying their one night of freedom in the new world. Tomorrow they will load up the ships with sugar and make the journey home to their wives and daughters. 

As I nurse my drink, they start to sing in slurred laughing voices:

If ye be sailing waters deep, 
Heed my warning lest ye sleep:
With the fishes, down below,
Dark and cold, death that's slow.
So toss a coin—down, down, down—
To sate the beast, lest ye be drowned. 

The words stir a memory in my old bones. In the cramped wooden structure of the taverna, with the sound of the waves outside I can almost imagine I'm a boy again. On the ship, taking my first and last journey across the sea. 
	But this is not a story about me, this is a story about Umbur-lee. 

Far underneath the ships transporting wealth and crushed dreams-deep in the twilight zone, her small head emerges from a cloud of bubbles. Followed by a pair of pale skinny arms and an ink runnel of hair. Octopus tentacles fan out where her legs should be, like a skirt. 
She is an ageless creature, child of the sea. She knows the currents and the trenches of the ocean like she knows the strength of her own tentacles. 
Today, she drifts close to the surface, where the sun rays warm the turquoise water. Then a shadow slices through the warmth. 
A ship. 
Umbur-lee becomes excited, her tentacles pump and she rises up. Until the water licks her cheeks and her eyes peek out. She sees a schooner drifting by. She slides closer until the air clammors with bells and shouts. Her eyes track a man walking on the deck. Arms swinging, like hers but thicker and darker colored.
This is not the first time she has spied on the sailors. At first she was fearful of their movement and noise, but since then her curiosity has grown. 
They haven't seen her yet. She's been careful, ducking below the waves when anyone looks her way. Sometimes she imagines what it would be like… If they did see her. 
An object falls from the ship. Umbur-lee, curious, swims to it. The slim gold disk rotates as it slowly sinks. She scoops it from the water and observes that it has a different image pressed into each face. One side has a woman holding a torch, the other, a cross. It seems valuable.
She glances at the ship, drifting away. And her fear cant hold her back any longer. 
When she pops up on the rail of the ship, sailors stumble back with a cry. One of them falls over in his attempt to get away. 
Siren! gasps one.
Kraken! screams another. 
All the sailors on the ship are now gathered, a good distance away gawking silently at her. The tension is icy.
She extends the coin, hoping to appear non-threatening.
The sailors mutter amongst themselves. Then a small boy is pushed forward. He cautiously creeps forward , glancing back at the group. Upon retrieving the coin, he scurries back. 
A man with a mustache, snatches the coin from the boy and scrutinizes it. He shoves it back into the boy's chest, and asks her what she wants. Unsure, she simply responds with: friendship. 
The sailors confer, and the mustache man proposes that she bring them a black pearl.
Umbur-lee dances among the frilly skirts of the pearl clams. She feels rather stupid. Of course returning the coin wasn't enough, she must contribute something of her own to win their favor. 
She approaches the largest clam, slides her tentacles into its mouth, gently prises it open. Inside, a sphere of night winks at her. She takes it, muttering an apology. 
When Umbur-lee returns to the ship, it is uncannily quiet. She flows over the rail and onto the deck, it is empty. She calls out, becoming more fearful by the instant. 
Then noise erupts. A mesh divides the sky into squares, Umbur-lee’s becomes entangled in a net. The sailors grab the edges pinning her to the deck. She shrinks in shock. 
The mustache man strides forward and scoops the pearl from where it had flown from her hand. He grunts, surprised. He didn't think she would actually find one, merely wished to distract her while he laid his trap.
She notices now how eel-like his smile is. 
Confused and distraught she tries to lunge at the man, wrap her tentacles around his neck, but the net holds her back. She is completely restrained, nowhere to run. 
Except…
She plunges her tentacles down into the deck, breaking boards like fish bones. The sailors cry out in alarm. But she drives all the way through, and water erupts through widening cracks. The ship whines in protest, beginning to split down the middle. 
Umbur-lee beneath the water again, sees the silhouettes of lifeboats splash into the water.  The panic rises in her throat, are they coming after her? She reaches up and grabs the boats, pulling them down one by one. Reaching for the last boat she hesitates. She rises above the water to see the boy with the coin huddled in the corner of the lifeboat. She looms over him, in his eyes she sees herself, shark toothed, terrifying. 
She reaches a hand towards him, but does not touch him, merely reaches into his pocket and takes back the coin. 

When I returned to shore with my story, I expected none to believe me. But sailors are superstitious, they spun my tale of disaster into a legend and tradition. Nowadays, any sailor worth his salt, throws a coin into the sea before every voyage, to keep away the cursed Umbur-lee. But I can't help but think that in that last moment we shared a connection. I will always feel a strange sympathy for her. 

I recorded myself reading the story under my comforter, then uploaded the audio file into Pro Tools. In addition to editing out all of (most of) the times I said “um” I also added some background music and sound affects to immerse the reader more in the story!

Then I just drew up some album art in Adobe illustrator, and BOOM! A nice little audiobook version of the story I wrote. The inspiration for the album art was dark water, that you can see a reflection in. I added lots of reflections into the big eye, representing some key elements of the story (the coin). Additionally I added a ship to the corner, and waves to the bottom. I wanted to include all the important motifs of the story while still creating a beautiful and clear composition.

Illustrations

Exquisite Corpse

In digital media we learned how to use adobe illustrator. We went through a lot of tutorials, then made our own illustrated exquisite corpse with friends! If you don’t know what an exquisite corpse is, you are missing out! It’s basically a funny creative game you can play with your friends, where each person draws one section of a three part illustration, without being able to see what the others have drawn. My illustration is on the far right. My idea for this was a butterfly coming out of its cocoon, because I wanted to do something organic. Something blobby and flowy, that would embody the morphing nature of the exquisite corpse.

Make a Choice Project

For this project we had to design a product in Adobe Illustrator, to make and have. The inspiration for this project was fairly simple. I wanted to make a gift for my grandparents (on my dad’s side). Both of them really love music, my grandma sings, and my grandpa plays the drums. I knew that my project would have to involve some sort of either drums of choral motifs. I decided to make a candle-shade because it seemed the most unique and useful. Because I was struggling to visualize choral music, I ended up making my candle shade entirely covered with patterns of drums. I created the designs of the drums individually with the pen tool, then grid repeated them to make a nice pattern.

After the laser cutter had cut out the designs I glued it all together and stuck a little candle inside.

Music

We wrote and performed a parody song in digital media.

CIA’s on my case
CIA’s on my case
CIA’s on my case
For the fraud I committed on tax day.

CIA’s on my case
CIA’s on my case
CIA’s on my case
For the fraud I committed on tax day.

I’m on the run with a tub of whey,
My muscles are boutta decay
I told my parents that I was gay,
Oswalded like I was JFK. 

I’m gonna be on the run this Christmas,
The cops are gonna just have missed us,
No hard feelings, it’s all for business
When on the run this Christmas!!!

Detained by my opps
Detained by my opps
Detained by my opps
They just dropped all my ROBLOX stocks.

My address has been doxxed,
By no other than my pops
For being gay I’ve been crossed
The cia have now become my opps

I wanna get some revenge this Christmas
Boutta shake up my opps a grimace (shake)
I’m Boutta murk my dad with a discus
Gonna end up like Oedipus. 

Cia gonna find him this Christmas
They ain’t ever gonna get a witness
He’s lying under the tree this Christmas
The Scent’s getting suspicious.

My dad has been glocked
My dad has been glocked
My dad has been glocked
Government’s top agents boutta be crocked.

I lied to the cops
I lied to my tots
I lied to my boss
About what (sum like ‘my marriage’ or ‘my job’) actually costs

I gonna be on the run this Christmas
I gonna run with my bosses missus 
He's gonna regret all his marriage decisions
When he's lacking this christmas!!

Animation

For the narrative 1 unit in animation, we transitioned into digital drawing tools. This was a bit of a rough transition for me because I had no experience with drawing digitally, as compared to many kids in my class who did. Despite this, in retrospect I am very proud of what I did. Do know that there were many long hours of frustrations and confusions along the way.

The tool that we were primarily using to animate was adobe photoshop. I know what you’re thinking… “Isn’t photoshop for editing photos??” But it turns out you can draw and even animate in there too.

Stop Motion Walk Cycle

This was the design for my stop motion puppet. I knew I wanted to make a knight because I was confidant I could make armor in 3D. I took inspiration from Dark Souls. One of the main things I like about Dark Souls’s armor design is that they add a lot of personality. I decided to add personality to mine by making him a chicken. Is it figurative? Is it literal??! I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

I made my little knight doll. His frame was made of wire, enforced with chopstick pieces as “bones”. Then I added some felt to give him some volume, although not too much, he is pretty lanky. His armor was made out of cut up pieces of a cereal box and lots of hot glue. Slapped on a coat of paint, and cut his little head feather and sword.

Then we took the puppet, put it in the green screen room, and took some glamour shots. Then we set up dragon frame, the app that we use for stop motion animations, and painstakingly took pictures of each pose for the walk cycle sequence.

Here is the final composition of my stop motion walk cycle, with my digital walk cycle created in adobe photoshop. I put it all together with the background photo in adobe after affects, and added some music I thought sounded appropriate, maybe some of you will recognize the tune? 🙂

Lipsync Animation

For this animation project we had to take a sound clip of someone talking, and animate the mouth to match. For this project we learned more of how to use Adobe After Affects. We created mouth shapes for different sounds, and then layered them on top of our mouthless character to create the mouth moving animation.

I also chose a song that had a violin, so I animated a violin bow moving across my characters violin. My song was a violin cover of the song Rehab by Rihanna. Did I know this song before this project ? Nope! I kind of just really wanted to do a violin.

Narrative Animation

This is the longest animation we’ve made so far, and it was a group project. Yay! I actually loved this project so much because it allowed me to collaborate with my fellow animation students, who are really awesome. I worked with Ash and Kajsa, I got to know both of them a lot better. Kajsa was our brave group leader, who weathered stressful meetings with Mr. Cho to talk about how behind we were. But against all odds, we finished just in time for Mr. Cho’s (extended) deadline!

After a chaotic story planning session, we decided were were going to animate a story about a boy who is a grave robber. He unsuspectingly steals a brooch from an undead, who then comes back to life and chases him through the city. The undead catches him and takes back the brooch, but mysteriously spares his life.

We split the story into 6 parts, and each did 2, here are my storyboards for my sections. I was a try-hard and decided to color all my storyboards. Looking back on them now I almost like them better than the final animation. I guess it’s like when the sketch looks better than the painting.

After some meandering sound editing, we refused to work on our Narrative any longer. If you would like to see it in it’s full glory, go ahead, but be warned that the art style is not consistent at all.