Introduction
In this unit, we learned how to best communicate our story ideas visually through a variety of different projects in our Digital Media, English, and elective classes. We began the unit with creating our own short stories and proceeded to bring these to life through several projects such as designing cover art for our flash fiction, narrating our stories and editing the audio with special effects, designing creatures that metaphorically represented the protagonists of our stories, editing real life photographs depicting scenes from our stories, and more. We were forced to step out of our comfort zone creatively and used familiar applications in a more advanced manner while also learning how to best utilize several new programs. In the Narrative 1 unit, we specialized in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Avid Pro Tools, amongst others.
It valued being able to become more familiar with a variety of new professional programs and also witness how I had improved in using ones we had learned last unit such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Avid Pro Tools. I also appreciated getting to really explore these creative mediums through my story because I feel like through having the time to display it in so many different ways forced me to revise it over and over again until it finally became something I am proud to share.
Story
The first project of the Narrative Unit was writing our own flash fiction “short stories” in English class. I had been watching a lot of murder mystery shows during this time, so I was immediately determined to create some kind of scary mystery that fit the 1000 word limit. We began the process with outlines, story boards, and character development brainstorms. In order to effectively lay out a series of clues and enough background information in order for the reader to get the full murder mystery experience, I had to write and rewrite the story a couple of times, slowly making it more concise each time while preserving the most important parts of the story. My final result was a story about a middle aged women Lucinda who was began to suspect that her mother, who died when she was a very small child, was actually murdered, and the killer was not only still out there but lived in her apartment.
After completing my story, I was able to bring it to life through designing an album cover that captured the essence of the story using Adobe Illustrator, and recording a full narration of my story and then editing the audio and adding sound effects, music, and other such adjustments through Avid Pro Tools. As a Design student who also loves listening to podcasts audiobooks, making the cover art and narration were two of my absolute favorite parts of this project. I also feel that designing the cover art really improved my Adobe Illustrator skills. Prior to this I primarily got my Illustrator experience in Design class using Wacom tables, but for this project I had to use my MacBook Laptop to create, which was a new experience.
A Splash of Color:
Lucinda hesitantly glanced at the colorful painting, unsure of what bothered her more, the bright neon colors or the fact that it was crooked. She could notice a pin in a haystack, but could not explain her distaste for color.
Perhaps this was all courtesy of her Aunt Clara, once a clever detective. Ever since Lucinda’s mom died just months after giving birth to her first and only daughter, Clara became a loving mother figure in Lucinda’s life. Her aunt always proclaimed color to be a distraction, going on about how black and white displayed the true beauty of life.
So here Lucinda was, a middle-aged woman, just recently turned fifty two, passing through the lobby on the way up to her tiny apartment in Lancaster. In her hand was a fresh cup of coffee, and in her coat, a pocket knife, her mother’s diamond ring, and a hair pin, of course. She never left the house without the ring, and as for the other two, well, Lucinda wouldn’t dare go out unprepared, always expecting the worst.
As she pushed the button to her floor on the elevator, she felt a breeze rush in. Turning to her right, Lucinda was surprised to see an unfamiliar face. It was a man she had never seen before. He had broad shoulders, musty gray hair, and deep wrinkles lining his forehead. Excuse me, she wanted to ask him. Do you live here? But she couldn’t get the words out. After making silent observations for the ten years she had lived in the building, Lucinda was sure she knew every single face by heart, and he was surely not a regular. She slipped her hand into her pocket and ran her fingers along the edges of her mother’s ring, something that she often did when she was nervous.
When the elevator came to a stop, the feeling of blood rushing back to Lucinda’s head kept her back a moment. As the strange man walked past her, she noticed something painfully odd. In his right pocket, a wad of cash, far too big to be carried around by any average person. But what was even stranger was what was in the other. A photograph, crumpled and ripped, was sticking out of his left pocket. It was only partly visible but brought up memories of a photo on her father’s mantle. A candid photograph of her mother from her early days, in which she was standing alone in front of a Jewelry Shop, wearing a dress made of rhinestones. And here it was, again, she was almost certain, so carelessly shoved in this strange man’s pocket. Could it really be? Perhaps she was imagining things.
Such a thing might be dismissed by most, but Lucinda knew her instinct was rarely ever wrong. She reached her hand out just stealthily enough to obtain a piece of its upper right corner, and soon after let out a small gasp. She was right, but the photo wasn’t the same. Her mom was still there, young and beautiful as ever, but to her right was the man she had just encountered, arms wrapped around her. Thoughts and questions flooded her head. Lucinda quickly flipped the piece of the paper over to see if there was a date. 1972, she was able to make out from the smeared pencil marks. That was the year her mother died.
Before the doors could close she quickly stepped out onto the man’s floor, inching forward and watching as he walked into the very last room of the row. Lucinda then made her way over and pulled out her hairpin, unlocking the door and peering through slightly. She was taken aback by what she saw. Colorful painting after painting lined the walls. She had never seen so much art in her life, and despised it. It wasn’t even a choice of her own, it was in her genes. She was raised to hate it, just like her mom and aunt and everyone else in her dull, artless family. She covered her eyes, tripping over the edge of the door and falling in. “You okay there?” She peered up and saw the man looking at her in a state of both confusion and amusement. Lucinda quickly got up and fixed herself. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I do know that you did something to my mom,” she spat out, holding up the photograph. To her surprise, the man smiled. Shaking his head, he replied: “Oh Meredith, I miss her so much. I didn’t know she ever had her daughter.” A swirl of emotions took over in Lucinda’s mind. “We first met in art school and remained the closest of friends. I was heartbroken when she fell ill,” he said. Art school? “But… my mom hates art,” she replied, confused. The man laughed. “Meredith? Hating Art?”, he laughed. “See these paintings here?” he pointed up to a row of canvas’ lining the ceiling. “All Meridith’s work.” Lucinda looked up at the swirls of color, soon spotting her mom’s name scribbled in the bottom corner of each of the paintings. That was her, alright.
Within the next thirty minutes the train arrived at her Aunt Clara’s house in the suburbs. At the doorstep, she knocked frantically. Her aunt answered the door. Clara, Lucinda jumped into her arms. Her aunt seemed confused. “What happened?” she said, leading her to the table in her monotone kitchen. “So I talked to this man, and he told me that mom was an artist,” Lucinda proclaimed. Her aunt looked shocked. After a moment she replied: “There are millions of people named Meredith in Lancaster.” But Lucinda couldn’t hear her at all. All she could hear were the loud, colorful thoughts running through her head as she looked across the painfully artless, black and white walls. Suddenly it all made sense. She did have all the pieces all along, but they were lacking one thing. Color.
Illustrations
This unit really gave me the opportunity of improving in my Adobe Illustrator skills. We worked on several projects, some with a prompt, such as the Exquisite Corps project, but others were completely open ended which was intimidating but also such a fun learning experience. The biggest example of this was our final Illustrator Choice Project. For the first few weeks we spent our time learning and familiarizing ourselves with the platform, which gave us access to an insane amount of professional tools, all which we were able to apply by the end of the Narrative 1 unit. The projects also really helped with practicing putting Adobe Illustrator’s capabilities to use.
Exquisite Corps Project
The Exquisite Corps Project was a group activity in which we were each assigned a different a part of a creature’s body to design using Adobe Illustrator. None of the Freestyle students in my group were allowed to see any of each others’ designs until the very end when Mr. Flo put all of our body parts together to make a whole creature, which was a hilarious and amazing reveal. It was such a cool experience to see the way others had interpreted this project but also the combination of each of our artistic visions created such a beautiful Corpse in the end. The project was actually based off of a game in real life called Exquisite Corpse in which each participant draws on a portion of a paper and then passes it along to the next, but only after folding it to conceal their own work. The fun is in the reveal, where everyones random drawings come together as one. It was so exciting to get to do this with our own twist using Adobe Illustrator.
Illustrator Choice Project
The Illustrator Choice Project was probably my favorite from the whole unit because we were allowed to create whatever design wanted through Adobe Illustrator, using the skills we had been learning all throughout the Narrative 1 unit. Once we were finished we got to print our design on a 3D object of our choice, in real life. When we started this project I had just recently come back from a tip to Hawaii and I saw a lot of people with cute, tropical, tote bags, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try and create one of my own. I really enjoyed the amount of freedom we had with this project and it was cool to be able to see my design on something that I am now able to use and show off everyday.
Music Production
During this unit, we also got the chance to experiment with music production and created our own parody for a song of our choice. Throughout the process of creating this, we got to edit the instrumental for our song, record our own lyrics in an actual studio, and edit it all together using Avid ProTools. I love songwriting and singing so this was a very fun creative project I got to partake in and I am grateful for the opportunity and resources at Freestyle such as our very own recording studio. However, I will be honest and say that ProTools is one of the most complicated programs I have used. It took me a while to learn how to pan vocals left and right, change the volume throughout, blend it effectively with the backing track, and so much more. For my song I chose to do Landslide by Fleetwood Mac, a timeless classic, but instead rewrote the lyrics to be about the various stresses of being in High School.
Design
Narrative Creature
In my elective class, we embarked on designing our very own creatures, a very lengthy, complicated, project, but worth the results. For our creatures, we combined the body parts of a mammal, reptile, bird, sea creature, and insect in a way that best represented the personality of the protagonist in our short story. My main character, Lucinda is independent, represented by a horse head, shy, represented by a turtle body, intelligent, represented by bird wings, mysterious, represented by a shark fin, and stubborn, represented by grasshopper legs. Through using Adobe Illustrator I was able to effectively combine all of these seperate body parts to create my own creature, named Sharklehorse Winghopper.
Narrative Creature Background
Following this, we created a background for our creature to be placed in, straight out of a scene from our short stories. I created an office, also an art studio, belonging to the main suspect in my short story in, in one point perspective. We also used Adobe Illustrator to create this. I used the line guide tools to help me follow the rules of one point perspective while drawing and the live paint bucket tool to fill shapes in. We also created our own color schemes for the background, seperate from the one used for our creatures.
Final Narrative Creature with Background
Narrative Character Portrait
We were challenged to bring our short stories to life even further through photography. In order to achieve this we had to find a model who would be willing to portray the main character and set up a scene from our story to use as the location for the photo. This one definitely brought me out of my comfort zone because I had never worked with camera lights before, but I ended up using a mixture of several to create an environment surrounded with dim red light, helping to further represent the crime scene I was attempting to portray. This project also brought me back to using Adobe Photoshop, and I used it to edit the curves of my photo as well as use a warm filter in order to enhance the portrait to my liking.
