The Narrative Freestyle unit challenged everyone to explore their creativity, while being able to express a story or meaning behind it. Of course it still focused on experimenting outside of the comfort zone using the resources and breathing room that they provided. In English this meant writing a short story of our own, with characters we curated ourselves to our liking. In Digital Media we learned more Adobe programs like Adobe Illustrator and even Pro-Tools, which is a non-Adobe program.

Overall, in the Narrative unit I valued how many more programs I’ve learned and developed skills for. I especially valued how we learned how to create music, as I think it’s not something that everyone has ears for and this unit helped us gain more ability for it. We were also challenged to record our own music within a studio, which is something that required a lot of confidence than I expected. I’m really glad that I got to express myself creatively more and especially how much storytelling I’ve been able to tell just from my art.

Write about – What was the assignment in English? What was your inspiration for your story? — Our assignment in English was to create a flash fiction story, taking inspiration from other Authors who introduced a main character, and created some sort of conflict in the middle of their story. For my story personally, I was inspired to make a story that revolved around a girl who was “perfect” in punctuality and also objectively in looks. In the beginning I really wanted to make her a morally gray character in personality, who was flawless in her exterior

In order to complete our story we had to narrate over our Flash Fiction stories, and add audio effects and music to them in Pro Tools. For me, I did a continuous take of my narration and edited out the mistakes later on. At the start and end of our productions we were supposed to add music, so I downloaded some rather than creating the music myself. I did the same thing for all of my sound effects, downloading them all off of copyright free sites online rather than using some of the sound effects that we had in the Freestyle audio library.

Perfection

She lived her life like it was constantly on loop,  when I first saw her it was like she was calling me to watch her. She happened to follow the same exact schedule every single day, never missing a single second where she didn’t do the exact same thing as the last day. I watched her from afar everyday, using different routes, sometimes silently following her or acting like a boastful businessman just to see her face. It was essential that she never even picked up on my real intentions. My infatuation for her life only grew, it was so peculiar, yet so enchanting. I’ve never seen a real person quite so dedicated to being punctual and consistent. 

In the early mornings, just after the sun had begun to rise, she’d strut out of her apartment. Her shallow green eyes always exuded the same level of confidence as the day before, which was indifferent to the bustling streets she walked through around her. From afar, her route from home through the public transport to work was effortless. She’d weave through the crowds, not giving a second thought to any accidents or obstacles she passed by and truly embodying the city girl stereotype. She would work till dawn, and always left at 7:30 on the dot. There was no doubt it was on purpose as I’d always follow her to a park at the edge of the city for the sunset. Despite the view of the sun being obstructed by the nearby buildings she still made an effort to sit on a bench facing west. She would take out a pocket mirror in order to adjust her makeup which I adored. I’d stare into her eyes through the mirror and it was almost like I could understand everything that was going through her head.

Only the smallest bit of time had passed ever since I’d memorized her schedule and attitudes throughout the day, but something was wrong. I knew everything about her, but she had lost her charm. I mean how could she of all people leave her apartment with her hair a mess? She’d consecutively been arriving at work late, surrounded by her coworkers who no doubt were asking if everything was alright. Her once pristine appearance had turned into being pale, frail, and.. anxious. When I’d followed her home that night her pace was quick and she kept her head low. The closer I got to her to figure out what was wrong her breath got shakier, it’s almost like she was distressed –  which didn’t make any sense because I know her work life is perfect. We were at the crossroads near her apartment, waiting for the light to let us cross when she went running. Before I could even react she’d run far in a way which wasn’t even towards her apartment and to where I’d never seen her go before. I had no other option but to be amused, she was sharp. 

Provide viewers with some introductory text about the custom illustrations

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Artist statement

In order to explore our musical creativity even more in digital media, we were challenged to create music in the recording studio and also in Pro Tools. For the Music Recording Project, we went into the recording studio with our friends and either played instruments or sang a song of our choice. On the other hand for our Experimental Music Project we were challenged to use the skills we learned in Pro Tools to create our own piece of instrumental music.

When recording in the studio, some takeaways were being able to learn about specific studio tech like being able to listen to each other on the headsets and adjusting each other’s volume. It was also fun to use the instruments and other tools inside of the studio; we messed around with percussion instruments like the tambourine which was originally in the song. Another thing that we were able to learn about was the different amps for the different instruments. Lastly we learned a lot about studio etiquette, knowing that we aren’t supposed to eat or bring our shoes into the studio while also respecting all the equipment.

My inspiration for my experimental music was specifically this one music artist my cousin introduced me to named After. I assume that they also use MIDI instruments because they have these notes that sound really electronic that pop out from the main track. I’m mostly proud of how I grasped using all the tools and setting up all the instrument tracks. I value being able to create music without actually playing them and instead using MIDI instruments when creating music.

For the design Narrative unit we mainly focused on using Adobe Illustrator for all of our assignments, and especially grasping new skills like the blend tool or live paint. Recently we had been learning how to draw in point perspectives, creating rooms using one point perspective as practice. So, that prepared us going into the major Narrative project.

In our Narrative Project we were challenged to produce a creature, based off of the characteristics of our English Short Story protagonist, and place it in a 1-2 point perspective setting. During the process of creating this illustration I valued the pacing of the class, as we received more time than other years to complete this project and I was able to add more details that I wanted to include (such as the smoke coming out from the buildings, and the sign next to the bridge).

My narrative flash fiction story revolves around a girl of which we don’t even know her name. The story is told from the perspective of her stalker, intrigued by her punctuality and therefore perfection, notes down her daily routine until one day it gets interrupted. The background I picked to illustrate specifically relates to my story, as most of the scenes are within the urban city that the girl lives in. At the edge of that city is a park with one of the most important scenes where it can be figured out that the girl knows that our narrator is following her.

In order to create my drawing in Adobe Illustrator I used the pen tool to create everything. I decided to do an illustration which had 2 point perspectives just to challenge myself, and I thought it would be interesting because I had 2 different environments depicted in my illustration. When depicting my ‘Meercatleckroach’ along the park trail, I used descriptions of my flash fiction story’s main character: obsessive, entitled, intrusive, clingy, and vigilant.

I didn’t have any difficulties during my creation process, so I didn’t have to fix anything later on. I have a feeling that the illustration I created wasn’t the type of vibe I wanted to portray, it gives off more of a nature vs industrial vibe instead of just being a park next to a city, but I am pleased with what I have created. If I had to change anything I’d make the cityscape look a little less gloomy and add more plant life to it in order to balance out the mood.

Looking back at my experience creating this project in Design, I’m really glad that we spent so much time really learning how to use Adobe Illustrator as it’s now an important skill to know for the Documentary unit. At times it got difficult with using the brush tool and it all felt way too professional than I’d like it to be, but I know it’ll also be useful later in the future if or when I ever enter a professional graphic design field. I also wish that we had time to do some other project, not just the Narrative Creature because I felt like the extra time we had to work on it was comfortable but boring and not challenging our creativity at all.