Narrative 1

Introduction

In the Narrative Unit, in all of my classes, we focused on telling stories through art and writing. In English, we wrote flash fiction stories which we then recorded ourselves narrating and created album art for in Digital Media. In Design, we took the main character of our narrative story and used five of their character traits to create a hybrid creature out of five animals. This semester, I was able to use Wacom Digital Drawing Pads, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Dreamweaver, HTML/CSS, SoundCloud, and Avid Pro Tools to create my projects.

I found this unit to be really fun and rewarding in each of my classes. I really enjoyed how the projects that I was working on involved all three of the classes. I was able to see myself improve as a storyteller both in my writing as visually. I can definitely see myself using the skills and programs I’ve learned this unit a lot in the future.

Story

The main project in English was the flash fiction narrative. A flash fiction narrative is a very short story. In English class we were confined to making ours between 500 and 1,000 words.

My story was centered around a girl who had lost her grandmother in the past year and had been struggling to accept her death. The story focused on her finally coming to accept this difficult loss and continue on with her life.

Lost and Found

It would have been a warm day if not for the harsh wind. The crisp morning air stung her face as she stepped out onto her small balcony, yet she didn’t mind. Footsteps and muffled chatter rang from the streets below as people started their days. She closed her eyes, basking in their energy, and for just a moment, her pain subsided. She glanced down at the letter in her hand and her senses returned.

She grasped it in her left hand; her right gripping the railing as she faced the city beyond. The swirling pink lettering smiled up at her, seemingly beckoning her to open it. The last words her grandmother had ever written, addressed with her name. The date read exactly a year prior, marking the first time she had felt truly alone.

The many nights in the past year spent crying herself to sleep, the cloud of hopelessness that seemed to constantly hover above her head—had all led her to this moment. She believed herself to finally be ready to face the past.

 Her fingers brushed the seal flap as she readied herself to finally reveal the letter’s contents, but in that second, as she loosened her grip, the wind picked up again. Before she had a chance to fully open it, the letter had been swept from her grasp, afloat on the harsh breeze.

She leapt to the railing, reaching out in a futile attempt to retrieve it — but the wind’s force had already carried it away. She remained there for a few moments with her hand outstretched. Then, the realization hit her. As she crouched down in front of the railing and tears began streaming down her face, she instinctively grabbed at the locket around her neck: the only physical connection to her grandmother she now had left.

Unaware that her locket had caught on the railing edge, she stood up. In this movement, the locket was ripped from her neck and slipped off of the balcony, onto the street below. She grabbed at her neck in pain, rubbing the red mark that the locket had left. As the pain eased, she began to see the reality of the situation.

She ran back to the railing, peering down at the street. Her eyes caught a glimmer of something metallic down below. There was still hope.

She sprinted through her apartment, neglecting to put on shoes or close the door behind her. Her slipper-clad feet hit the carpeted hallways hard as she ran for the stairs; waiting for an elevator would take too long. She received strange looks from others on the staircase as she fumbled her way into the lobby, but her tunnel vision remained. All that was on her mind was retrieving the locket.

Pushing past the doorman, she stumbled out onto the crowded street, frantically looking around. The place where she had seen the metallic glimmer was empty. Surrounding faces began to blur together as tears filled her eyes. Raindrops began to fall as she stumbled along the sidewalk, frantically looking. The more she looked however, the more hopeless it began to seem. This was it. It was really gone. It seemed there was nothing she could do about it. 

She sank to her knees, tears streaming down her face. The sounds of the city faded around her, and all she could hear was the pitter-patter of the rain, growing heavier with each passing second. 

Shakily getting back on her feet, she wiped her eyes. The people passing by had paid her little attention, such displays were commonplace in the busy city. A short way up the sidewalk a man embraced a woman with a tight hug. Further down she noticed a little boy grasping his grandfather’s hand: gazing up at him with adoring eyes. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes once again as her memories with her grandmother flooded her mind.

She could picture their many adventures together. How her grandmother’s laugh would ring through her house. The way her eyes crinkled at the edges and sparkled when she smiled. The memories played through her head, and realization began to rush in. The locket, merely a physical object, could not possibly contain all of the memories they had shared. It was not the locket or the letter or any other object really, but her own memories that would always hold the most value.

Her grandmother may have been physically gone, but she was still there. She could miss her every day, but her grandmother would never really be gone; her love would forever live on in the memories of those whose lives she graced. Raindrops still danced on the street around her but blue was starting to peek through the dreary skies. Wiping at her tear-stained face once again, she looked up at the people around her and slowly smiled.

After writing finishing writing our stories in English, we recorded ourselves saying them and added music and sound effects using Pro Tools. Although I’d used the program before in the past, I enjoyed using it again and getting more practice editing sounds.

Illustrations

A big part of the Narrative Unit in Digital Media was learning how to use Adobe Illustrator, a vector graphics program. After doing some practice in class, we began work on the Illustrator project, in which we would create a drawing and had the option to make stickers, a clothing design, a candle shade, and more. For my project, I chose to make stickers. I really enjoyed the creative freedom this project allowed me to have during class. Being able to create a tangible product that I could keep for myself was a really great experience.

At first, I struggled with how to use the tools to draw, as they are very different from those in any other program that I’d used before. However, as I got more familiar with the program and worked with it more in Digital Media and Design, I found that it made more sense. If I had more time, I would add even more detail to the drawing with shading and texture, but the time I was able to spend on it was limited, so I did what I could. Ultimately, I’m really happy with the way these stickers turned out and can’t wait to have and use them!

Exquisite Corpse

In Digital Media, one of the group projects was to create an “exquisite corpse”, in which each member of the group drew a part of the drawing in Illustrator. My group of four decided to go with the theme of “elements” for our project and each drew one of the four elements. To represent my element, earth, I chose to draw a vine with flowers and leaves on it. In the end, we connected all of the drawings together to create our final exquisite corpse. I’m really happy with the way my part turned out for this project!

Music Production

Another focus of Digital Media this unit was learning how to use Pro Tools to edit and personalize music. In this project, came up with parody lyrics for a song of our choosing and used Pro Tools to remove the original singing and replace it with our own. I took the lyrics to the song “Bad Liar” by Imagine Dragons and rewrote them to be about cheese. When this project was introduced, I was stumped as to what to make my parody song about so I just went with the first thing that popped into my head.

Other than my sub-par singing, I’m satisfied with the result of my project and had a lot of fun with it. I enjoyed the creativity that the project let me have, both when writing my lyrics and then when recording and mixing it with the original song audio. It’s been really interesting learning how to edit audio this semester so far. I found it a bit difficult at first to use Pro Tools and removing the original vocals from the song confused me, but once I figured it out, I was happy with the result.

Lyrics:

There’s no way to disguise
This love that I do feel
Every bite’s a new surprise
Never felt something so real
Ricotta is quite nice
I love brie, I cannot lie
Mozzarella makes me smile
I can’t have but just one slice

‘Cuz I’m a cheese lover, you’ll discover
Once I have a bite
It’s gonna be alright
‘Cuz I’m a cheese lover, I can’t recover
So I beg you please, give me a piece of cheese

Design Projects

We focused on using Adobe Illustrator during the narrative unit in Design class. Through various projects over the course of the unit, I got more practice and became much more comfortable with the program. Now that I’ve used it so much, I can confidently say that Illustrator is my favorite of the applications I’ve used at Freestyle. Im excited to keep learning and using it more in the future.

Linear Perspective Bedroom

Linear perspective is a style of drawing in which objects are drawn to create the illusion of depth based on the size and position of their surroundings. We would be using this style in Design class to create a background for the Narrative Creature Project. To practice this skill, everyone drew models of their bedroom, making all of the angles and lines accurate to the real space using linear perspective. In Adobe Illustrator, using lines, shapes, and the live paint tool, I drew each part of my bedroom with accurate proportions.

Narrative Creature

My flash fiction narrative follows the story of a girl who is struggling to accept her grandmother’s death. For the past year, she had isolated herself, depressed over the loss. At the beginning of the story, she goes outside onto the balcony of her apartment to open the last letter her grandmother had ever written her. However, the letter is thrust out of her hands and carried away by the wind. Moreover, a second later, the locket around her neck breaks and falls down onto the street below where it gets lost amongst the crowd of people walking below. The loss of these items forces her to realize that these physical possessions could never hold as much value as her own memories, and she is finally able to accept her loss for what it is

In Design class, we took the character and turned it into a creature. To do this, we chose five personality traits from the character, assigning each of them a different animal that most represented the quality. In the end, we chose the mammal, insect, bird, sea creature, and reptile that best reflected each of the traits, and turned them into a creature using Adobe Illustrator. In my creature, stubbornness is represented by the face and body of a snow leopard, solitude by the legs of a grasshopper, cleverness by the wings of a scarlet macaw, anxiety by the glowing lure of an anglerfish, and trustworthiness by the tail of a chameleon. I combined the names of each of these animals to create the name of my creature: the Snowlet Hopmeleon. The background of my project is a flower shop in the city. I chose to use this location because my story takes place in the city, and when designing our characters in English, I decided that mine worked in a flower shop. Additionally, I felt that the message of acceptance that is a major theme in my story is well represented through the idea of new life within the plants in the shop. Using linear perspective, I brought my background to life, creating a visually realistic location for my creature to inhabit. Overall, I feel satisfied with my project, although one thing I might’ve changed would have been to make more contrast between my creature and my background, as the colors I used are quite similar. I really enjoyed this project and have learned a lot through the process.

Using the skills I’d learned when practicing linear perspective, I created my background for the project. I’m really happy with the way it turned out and I think it fits the character and story nicely.