Introduction
For the Narrative 1 project, the basis of all of our work was the short stories that we created in English. During the beginning of this project, we read 1984 as a class, where we discussed the themes and identified story building techniques in works of long fiction. After that, we read multiple short story works, which then lead us to writing our own. With my short story, as a Design student, I photographed a portrait representing my main character, as well as illustrated a creature also based on my main character. Overall, we learning how to tell a story, although limited, and creatively express that story through different mediums and concepts.
These projects definitely helped me better express the ideas I had in my head, through the portrait, the illustration, and the story. I ended up becoming increasingly passionate about the separate projects because I became so connected with my story with working with in so many different formats. I also ended up really enhancing my skills regarding photography and different lighting, as well as my skills with Adobe Illustrator, as that is where our Narrative illustrations were created.
Story
For the English portion of this overall project, we started working with building up the plot and characters, even though a lot of the information we came up with didn’t end up in the story. This helped with us being able to really know our characters, knowing how they would react to things, and overall making the story more engrossing, even if certain elements of planning didn’t make the final cut.
For this project, I knew I wanted a bit of an unconventional main character, not the most morally sound character. I thought writing about an existential crisis, which my character ends up having towards the ladder half of the story, could be interesting. Since there is not a lot of words to work with, I thought this kind of idea would end up working because it’s short, yet there is still so much to work with.
For the Digital Media portion of this project, we recorded our stories and then added music and sound effects to add a realistic element to the story. First, I recorded the story, and then input that recording into ProTools. From there, I went through sound effects that matched up with the parts of the story and put them in where I needed to. I ended up not using any music for this project, because I couldn’t find copy-right free music that matched with the story.
Floor 12
I hated my job. I hated the plain gray walls and I hated the cream linoleum floors. I hated my cubicle, and the coworker who wore a toupee and a navy wrinkled suit everyday to work. I hated my coworker who to my knowledge didn’t know what deodorant was, and I hated my coworker who had grown out roots that didn’t match her bleach blonde hair. So when I saw that there was a position available putting me on the top floor and increasing my pay by 15%, I knew I had to apply. It was a slight inconvenience that most of my coworkers were applying for the same position, but I would handle it. I was going to get that job, just like how I had got the previous one, and just how Jenny Spiegel from second grade couldn’t stop throwing up right before the school talent show. All it took was a little; “Jim told me that your interview was moved to tomorrow, better hope you’re prepared”, and some “You might want to have that chip in your tooth filled before the interview, you don’t want to come across as unprofessional”. Navy Wrinkled Suit was a little harder to deal with, none of my comments got to him. So, after some brainstorming, while he went to get his daily donut and coffee, I stole his resume from his desk and shredded it.
Dealing with my coworkers was the hard part. When it came time for the interview a couple weeks later, it couldn’t have been easier. I killed it. I presented everything perfectly, I wore a carefully ironed pantsuit, and I sprinkled in enough charisma to make it seem like I really enjoyed the woman interviewing me. I left that room with my head held high and took a tour of the top floor–making sure I knew where the break room was, where my office would be, where the bathrooms were located, just so I could be fully prepared for when I started working.
They said they would call if I got the job within a week, and it had been a week and two days. ‘They must be super busy’, I thought, so I decided to call them instead, to really show them my excitement about the new position. I sat on my leather sofa, dialed the number, and the interviewer picked up after three rings.
“Good morning Nancy, it’s me, Diamond Ateridge from the interview a little over a week ago. You said you would call within the week, but I get that you’re busy and I assumed you just forgot, so I thought I’d call you instead.”
“Good morning Diamond, unfortunately we didn’t call because we gave the job to another candidate, it was a super close call. If-”
I hung up. I stared at my wall. Had it always been that white? When did that stain get there, and how long had that painting been crooked? Who on this Earth could have possibly been a better fit for this job than me? This was outrageous, there must have been a mixup. Who is this Nancy woman anyways? Her shirt was this hideous pink color, not to mention how horribly it clashed with her shoes. Who is she to tell me that I’m not the right fit? I can decide if I’m the right fit or not by myself, I don’t need some wrinkling woman with zero fashion sense to tell me whether or not I meet her “standard”. I exceeded the standards, but apparently she was looking for someone who was incompetent. Oh, that’s my bad! I guess I’ll try harder to mess up reports and wrongly file important documents next time.
Getting out of bed the next day was slightly harder than normal, I’ll admit that—even my concealer didn’t blend on my face as seamlessly as it usually had. Nevertheless, I had a job to go to. I never thought I would have to work on the third floor ever again, alas here I was. I kept my head held high as I walked into the building, no one even knew I applied for the promotion so they wouldn’t know I didn’t get it. I was in the clear. Navy Wrinkled Suit passed me and walked into the elevator and I waited for him to tell me good morning, but he didn’t. Every day since my first day working here he has said good morning to me. He must be confused though, as I just caught a glance at him pushing the button for floor 12, the top floor of the building.
I approached the elevator, and fumbled around my purse to find my key card. I reached out to swipe, but the red light flashed. Strange. I wiped the card, and then tried again. It flashed red again. I tried again. It flashed red again.
Illustrations
In this portion of the semester, in Digital Media, we really explored Illustrator and all it can do. We did multiple intro practices to get a feel for the program, and these were aided by my knowledge of Illustrator from Design in our portion of the Narrative project. With these skills, we created an Exquisite Corpse, and a project of our choice.
When introduced to this project, I knew that I wanted to make some sort of hoodie design, however coming up with the design took a little more time. Eventually, I decided on a blueprint design. I chose this design mostly because I really like visually the way blueprints look, and I also have a big love for drawing architecture. Once I came up with the house design, I also decided to put the blueprint background design on the sleeves. Finally, I wanted to add my signature somewhere on the hoodie, so I decided on the sleeve. I also wanted somewhere to include my Mexican heritage, so I ended up putting the Mexican flag colors right under the signature.
This project was a good way for me to put into practice all the illustrator skills I had learned through the practice we did in Digital Media, and the work we did in Design for the narrative creature. When designing it, the process was overall pretty smooth because I felt like I was pretty well prepared. If I could change anything, I might have changed the hoodie color and the way it was printed onto the hoodie. All of the white I used in the design ended up showing up as transparent, and I am not entirely sure how I would’ve fixed that, but if I figured out a way to, I probably would have.
Music Production
The music production project for Digital Media was a parody song of our choice. When we were first assigned this I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do, but me and Rachel Berry, my partner in this project, finally came up with our song choice of Let it Grow from the Lorax soundtrack.
Our process for this project, once we found the song we wanted, was to rewrite the lyrics. Since we didn’t really know what we wanted to write about, we decided to change the lyrics of the song, so they were the opposite. For example, “let it grow” was changed to “let it die”. Then, we got the karaoke version of the song off of YouTube, and started recording. For recording, it went mostly smoothly except for the fact that me and Rachel couldn’t stop laughing, so that made it hard to get a good take in. Eventually, we got a few good takes and added them to our Audition file. From there we edited the audio slightly and then we were finished.
Lyrics to “Let it Die”:
[Verse 1]
You don’t know me but my name’s Dan
I sell you air, in caaaans
So I think trees should be burned & banned
So I say let it die
[Verse 2]
My name is Mike And my name’s Tina
Our son, robert, looks too oxygen-ated
And that’s pretty bad so we are sad
We should let it die
[Chorus]
Let it die, let it die
We don’t plant what we don’t want
Oxygen is way too much Its pointless to keep trying
Let’s celebrate the world’s regress
We say let it die
Design
For the Design Narrative projects, we had two separate projects. The first one, was a portrait of our main character, depicted to be in a pivotal moment of the story. We learned about coloring, lighting, props, posing, etc., all different ways to convey a certain emotion/message. The second project was an illustration, done in Adobe Illustrator, of a creature based on the personality and characteristics of our main character. We took five traits, and related them to five separate animals. From there, we found a way to combine all the animals into one, leaving us with hybrid creatures.
Here, we are looking at Diamond Ateridge. She is a young adult who, through her life, has always gotten what she has wanted. Whether it was the talent show or a job interview, she did everything she could to make sure she would get that prize or position–even not typically morally-sound methods. In this specific frame, she is getting the phone call that she was denied her dream job position. This call leads her into emotional turmoil, where everything starts falling apart in her life.
For the photoshoot of this photo, I encountered some difficulties, mainly with lighting. We were tasked to use a key, fill, and back light to convey the emotions of the scene, so I decided to make the key light red to show her anger. The problem I encountered was that there were many windows, and I shot at 3 pm, which meant I had to battle with the strong natural lighting. On a different project, this could have been very useful, but with this photo I wanted to use the red light, and make it a little darker to convey her anger in this moment. To fix my problem, I hung up dark sheets to cover the windows, and I was able to create a darker scene. In Photoshop, I increased the contrast a little bit, and added a vignette. I also made some selections and made certain parts of the photo darker/lighter.
My short story captures my main character, Diamond Ateridge, and how she went to great lengths to be hired for a certain job position, and was unsuccessful. She had never been denied like that in her life, and it sent her in a spiral. When she went back to her regular job, her shady methods of securing her position were revealed and resulted in her unemployment. This scene in particular is what I imagined to happen after my story, where Diamond breaks into the building and has a breakdown in the office she would have worked in.
To make this drawing, we used Adobe Illustrator. We learned lots of tools and settings which can be manipulated to mimic real life textures, like the roughen tool to mimic fur, and the gradient tool. For the creature, we placed images of each animal used in the creature, and traced them. We had to figure out how to join each animal together to make one cohesive animal as well, including blending colors so they seem like the animal could appear naturally. The animals in Elsquagleon are an elephant, a mosquito, an angler fish, chameleon, and a hawk. I chose the elephant to represent Diamond’s charisma, a mosquito to represent her determined/relentless trait, angler fish to showcase her ability to be two-faced, the chameleon to show that she can blend in to her surroundings, and finally the hawk to represent her strength and power. In this scene she has broken into the building through the window, as reflected through the shattered glass, and is in the office that she would have worked in. I am proud of my work, although there are things I would add/change if I was still working on it, however that is the case with all of my artwork.