Narrative 1

INTRODUCTION

Our Narrative 1 unit took place from October to February. In this Unit, our main focus was o be able to visually present a structured story. I felt that this unit was especially important in learning how to visually communicate, a key part of the Freestyle curriculum. Through this unit, we created projects based on our Flash Fiction Narrative we wrote in our english class. Outside of english, we continued to use applications and equipments from last unit, like Pro Tools, DSLR Cameras, Tascam Audio Recorders, and WordPress. A new application we were introduced to was Adobe Illustrator. I was most excited to be able to learn about illustrator in this unit as I have heard many artists use this for their creations.

Through this unit, I was able to learn how effectively use visuals in order to communicate a story or a theme. I have always thought that in order to present a story, you needed to elaborate it in words. However, through this unit, I learned that with the right ideas and skills, you can present a story without using any words. Through this unit, I was able to improve my skills of certain applications, like Pro Tools and Illustrator. Although I faced some struggles with getting used to the new functions in these applications, they helped me learn how to efficiently use them to create great works of art.

STORY

In our english class, we were first introduced to the stage book Red by John Logan. Red was an example of a well executed story that was shortened to only a few pages. Through many class discussions, we were able to analyze the plot and structure of the book. Through reading Red, we learned the importance of presenting the story visually. Taking what we learned from the Red discussions, we went on to write our own short story. We utilized sensory details when writing our stories, focusing on a “show, not tell” style of writing. Later in the unit, we put our focus on novels instead of short stories. We read the infamous novel, 1984 by George Orwell. While going through the book, we held class discussions every class where we analyzed each chapter and theorized on what would happen next.

Our main assignment in english was the narrative short story. What we focused the most in writing this short story was utilizing sensory details to help tell the story of verbally explaining the scenarios. Although I have used visual details in my writings before, I never thought of using other sensory details like scent, feel, sound, and taste. This was a new challenge for me since I was used to writing events in my story directly instead of giving specific details. The story I wrote, called Farewell, follows the story of Ed a young adult trying to get by. However, he must make a tough decision in order to get out of the boring cycle of his everyday life.

Although I faced challenges with writing this story, like Ed’s characterization and using sensory details, the most challenging part was producing the audio. Even though I learned the basics of Pro Tools in the last conceptual unit, I still find it the hardest application that we have used in Freestyle. First, we used the Tascam Audio Recorder to record the narration of our short story. When recording, we had to make sure to recite it in a dramatic way that fits the stories mood. After, we transported the audio to Pro Tools, we adjusted the level of the audio, made sure it was audible, and got rid of any unnecessary noise. Then we picked background music that went with the mood and plot of the story. I chose a different audio for different scenes, for example a cheerful sounding song for a happy moment in the story. Aside from background music, we also added sound effects to pull in our readers to our story.

Farewell

On the 3rd floor of a rundown building in New York City, the city of dreams, Ed looks at his phone, waiting for the next order that he would need to deliver. Bored waiting for the orders, he opens facebook. He scrolls through to take a glimpse of his past classmates’ life. Jerry has graduated from MIT and is advancing to grad school. Amy is traveling around Europe with her fiance. Matthew, who was notorious for being a delinquent, seemed to be finding his ground in the countryside working on a farm. Despite going to the same high school 5 years ago, the classmates live in a different world from Ed, who is living off of ramen noodles and door dash. As his energy starts to drain, Ed decides to stop looking at facebook, and goes outside for a morning walk.  As he gets his shoes on, he realizes that he had forgotten an important item. He looks around the desk, then reaches for the allergy relief medicine. He grabs some fish sticks from the counter as he steps out the door of his 98.5 square foot apartment.

Ed heads towards the sketchy alleyway on the left side of the building. Even before turning the corner, the purr of the stray cat makes Ed feel at ease. The cat, which can already sense the presence of fish sticks, runs up to Ed.  As he opens the fish stick packets, Ed brushes his hands against the cat’s soft fur. So soft that it helps you forget all your worries in life, like the fact that you are in massive tuition debt from the college you dropped out from, the fact that the greedy landlord of yours wants to raise the price of rent, and the fact that you have no friends to hang out with anywhere in the city. With everyone else moving on in Ed’s life, the cat always remains in the same alleyway, every day, patiently waiting for Ed and his fishsticks.  

Right as the cat finishes the fishsticks, the phone in Ed’s pocket dings. Another delivery order. Ed parts ways with the cat and heads towards his motorcycle, opening the maps app on his phone to direct him to the next restaurant. However, Ed can’t help but notice the unsettling feeling in the air.

After 4 continuous delivery orders, Ed comes back to his apartment building. He jumps on his twin bed, ready to take a nap. However, he notices some leftover fish sticks left on the counter. Ed had given the cat only a half of its usual amount of fish sticks that morning. Despite his sore legs anchoring him to the ground, he gets up and grabs the fish sticks from the mini fridge, and heads outside to the alleyway. Arriving near the alleyway, Ed waits to see if the cat can notice him before making his appearance. But instead of the usual purring, all you can hear is the loud sound of construction from a block away. Ed’s heart starts pumping faster than usual. Slowly walking towards the alley, he peeks over. The only visible thing in the alleyway was the remains of a half eaten pizza, some crumpled newspapers, and a pile of trash bags. No cat. Ed’s head tilts to the side, as this was the first time that the cat was absent from its usual spot during this hour. 

The cat is a stray. It would be unnatural for a stray cat to stay in one place their entire lives. However, Ed starts to break into a cold sweat at the cat’s absence. With conflicting feelings emerging, he begins searching around. Behind the apartment buildings? Nope. In the alleyway across the street? Nope. In the corner store that many stray animals go to for leftover food? Not there either. Desperate for the cat’s presence, Ed expands his field of search by using a motorcycle. The sun slowly sets, as Ed moves over from street to street, town to town.  His stress level is through the roof by now. Ignoring his delivery order texts, he continues searching all over the busy city. 

With the sun  completely set, the sky is a gloomy gray void. Despite the dread filling up Ed’s mind, he decides to end the day and go back home. He had somehow ended up in the middle of some nearby new york suburb. Ed walks over to his motorcycle parked in a stranger’s driveway, a fish stick still in his pocket. As he gets onto the motorcycle, an old lady from across the street catches him.

“What do you think you’re doing,” she yells with a loud grouchy voice. Ed turns around, not feeling in the mood to apologize. All of the sudden, his eyes open wide as it captures something strange in the ladies arms. 

A familiar looking cat purrs in the ladies arms, looking tired. It doesn’t seem to recognize Ed, as it is half asleep, but Ed is certain that he’s finally found what he was looking for. He has never seen the cat this late before, as Ed has often fed the cat during the mornings before starting work. It turns out Ed’s assumption of the cat’s life has been wrong all along.  His eyes then shift to the sign that was placed in the lawn of the old lady’s home: For Rent.

  His conflicting feelings return, but this time with a hint of bittersweetness. 

“Sorry ma’am,” Ed apologizes with a small smile on his face. He takes one more glance at the cat. This time, it was awake. With its eyes widened, the cat seemed to have noticed Ed’s presence. He shoots a smile at the cat, and leaves without saying a goodbye. 

ILLUSTRATIONS

In Digital Media class, the main focus of the unit was learning how to use illustrator. Despite already using illustrator in design class Digital Media taught me about more tools that I have never used before. For example I learned how to use clipping masks, pen tool, and alignment tools. We utilized these tools through different assignments throughout the unit. For example, the exquisite corpse project.

Exquisite Corpse

The challenge of this project was to put together a full image of a creature without knowing what your group members will draw. We were each assigned with different parts of the body. I was in charge of the end. Because I got the end of the creature, I thought it would be cool to do something inspired by a fish. I recently learned about the existence of the gradient mesh tool in design, and decided to use that to create a cool blended effect on the tool. The Gradient Mesh tool allows you to add a gradient of multiple colors on your object. When combining all the 3 pieces of the creatures together, it looked really funny because of how inconsistent it is.

Illustrator Project

Another project we did was the Illustrator project. In this project we got to make designs that could be printed onto physical objects, like mugs, T-shirts, or bags. I decided to create an embroidery patch for my project.

I was very excited when I first heard about this project. Although I have created many pieces of art before, I never really had the opportunity to turn my works into something physical. With this project, I was thrilled to see how the final product would turn out.

For my project, I decided to create an embroidered patch with an illustration of a bunny. I took inspiration from the doodles I made in my notebooks. The doodles in my notebook contain lots of drawings of bunnies and characters. I decided to turn a doodle of an angel bunny into a finalized digital illustration. I chose this doodle to use for my project because bunnies have been my favorite animal since I was little. I also thought that the design of the drawing was cute but simplistic enough to turn into a patch. To create the illustration, I used the pen tool on Illustrator.

The final assignment we had was creating the section banners used on this website page. I decided to go for a fun and colorful style for the banners. I created stickers on the banners with the use of the stroke tool. I also used the live paint tool to color the drawings. The most difficult banner I created was the music section banner. Because I wanted to give the shiny, reflective effect for the CDs, I used the gradient mesh tool and used feathered shapes on to the CD layer.

MUSIC

Pro Tools was not just used for the story, but used to create our own song as well. Our assignment was to create a parody song with a song of our choice. What we had to do for this assignment was select a song, remove the vocals of the song, write the lyrics, record ourselves singing, then putting everything together. The hardest part was definitely the task of getting rid of the vocals from the original song, which I am still confused with how to do. Outside of the technical side of this assignment, I found the project interesting.

Parody Project

When I originally heard that we were doing a parody song project in our class, I was instantly reminded of the Minecraft parody songs that me and my brother use to listen to as kids. These parody songs took popular songs that everyone knows and changed the lyrics to fit with the context of the game Minecraft. Although these songs were cringey, they bring me back to the times when I was a little kid playing Minecraft all day instead of worrying about school. I wanted to focus on bringing out the silly but nostalgic feeling when creating the parody song. I chose the song “Fireflies” since it is a song that makes me feel nostalgic every time I listen to it. In the lyrics, I talk about the difficulties of mining in a cave in Minecraft. With may monsters that attack you, it is harder to get the ores you need to make new tools like axes and swords. When writing the lyrics, I made sure to keep the original structure and rhythm of the song while also being creative with the word use. 

When creating the parody song, I worked with applications and tools that I have never worked with before. For example, Pro Tools was an application that I wasn’t familiar with prior to this project. Because I didn’t have experience with audio editing, I ran into many issues working on this project, like cutting out the wrong parts, adding too many effects, and forgetting to save my file. However, through my mistakes and conflicts, I was better able to understand how to use the application. I am confident that I can use these Pro Tools skills I learned into good use in the future. 

Lyrics

‘Cause I’d get a thousand hugs

From all the fun scary mobs

As they try to kill me when i mine

A creeper behind my back

A spider crawls above my head

with my low hp i might just be dead (dead, dead)

I’d like to make myself believe that mining is so easy

It’s hard to say cuz my wooden pickaxe is so frickin weak

‘Cause diamonds are more rare than they may seem 

DESIGN

Our work in design class for this semester was all made using Adobe Illustrator. I was surprised to find out that Illustrator and Photoshop were two very different applications. One of the major differences is that Illustrator creates vector graphics, whereas Photoshop creates pixel graphics. Illustrator is more catered for creating graphic designs and Images. Because I like drawing, I found Illustrator more fun to use than Photoshop.

Illustrator Practice

The first assignment we did with Illustrator was a simple duck drawing. We used a photo of a rubber duck to use as guidelines. Through this assignment, I was able to learn how to properly use a pen tool, which I am still getting used to. We learned the Importance of layers in illustrator. I had so many layers on this illustrator file which was way more than what I was used to. One thing that surprised me about Illustrator was the different effects they provide. One we used the most was the feather tool, which is used to blur out the edges of a shape. In the duck assignment, we used the feathering effect on the light reflections on the eyes and the beak.

Before starting our main project for this quarter, we first had t learn effects we can use for our narrative creatures. For example, fur was an important effect we learned since many animals have fur. We created this fur effect using a combination of the roughening tool and the blend tool.

We also learned how to create feathers in illustrator for bird creatures. To create the individual feathers, we used a gradient within the shape, then the scallop tool to give the shape the streaky effect to achieve the look of the feather.

Narrative Creature

After learning the Illustrator basics, we moved on to the main project, our narrative creature. We were tasked with creating a hybrid creature based on our main character in our short story in english. The catch was the each different animal we used had to have some representation of the character in personality. Based on the characters Personality, we also created a custom color pallets. We did research on the different colors and the moods they convey as well as color harmonies to create the perfect color pallets for our creatures. For inferences, we gathered pictures of the different animals on the web, and then arranged them in different ways to create our creature. Then we used Illustrator to bring the creature to life. Aside from the creature, we had to create a background of the creatures natural habitat. This habitat also had to relate to the story and the main character.

For the background, we used a common technique used in art, linear perspective. Linear perspective has the ability to give drawings more depth and dimension. Although I knew how to use linear perspective from previous art classes I took, I found using them in illustrator difficult. I had so many lines on my Illustrator files that I used as guidelines and it got confusing with which direction the lines were supposed to go. Especially for the the balcony, which uses many lines for the fence.

Narrative Creature Artist statement

Ed is not a very special guy. He lives in New York City while trying to make ends meet through food delivery, and lives in his 98.5 square feet apartment. While other people his age are studying or achieving great things in life, Ed is stuck in this cycle of working and  sleeping without a clear goal in life. The one thing brightens his sad life up is a stray cat that lives in the sketchy alleyway of his apartment. Despite the warmth and happiness he gains from hanging out with the cat, Ed’s boring life goes on, as he is too scared to make a change. This limits his ability to grow and get out of his unhappy state of life. One day the cat that he loves disappears out of nowhere.  With this conflict, Ed must learn to find happiness by himself instead of relying on others for it. 

The Polar Kiwilian has characteristics of five different creatures, which are a polar bear, a hermit crab, a kiwi bird, a butterfly, and a chameleon.  These creatures have characteristics that represent Ed as a person.  The polar bear represents his solitary way of living. The chameleon’s ability to blend in shows his inconspicuous nature. The Hermit Crab represents timidness, as they tend to hide in their shell for protection. The butterfly represents his gentleness. Finally, the kiwis inability to fly represents Ed’s inability to “take flight” in order to change. For the creature, the color palette was based on Ed’s personality and characteristics. The main colors I used are pink for timidness and kindness, blue for sadness, purple for compassion, and yellow for cowardice. In the artwork, the Polar Kiwilian is in a city alleyway, which is where Ed goes to see the stray cat. This spot is the place where Ed finds the most happiness. I chose the colors green, orange, and yellow to represent peace, warmth, and happiness. To create this piece, I used Adobe Illustrator. For the creature, the main tool I used was the pen tool. The hardest part of this project was learning how to use the pen tool and getting used to its method of drawing lines. To make the fur texture shown in the kiwi and the polar bear, I added a roughen effect to the shape.  For the background, I used lines and one point linear perspective, where some lines would lead to the vanishing point. Although I have drawn in linear perspective many times, it was harder in this project because of how many lines and details I used. To color the Background, I used the live paint bucket tool, which made coloring easier since you just had to click on a shape to color.  Overall, I am very pleased with how this piece turned out. With this project, I was able to learn more about the application of Illustrator and its many tools.

Narrative Photo

Although we created a creature for a metaphorical representation of the main character in our short story, we made a more literal representation through photography. Through this photography project, we learned about the importance of lighting, angles, and props to convey a mood or message. We had the opportunity to use colored lights in our photo, as color is a powerful tool for conveying emotion in art. Because I had never used lighting equipment before, it was frustrating for me to figure out how to adjust the lights to my liking. However, after I understood the functions of the different buttons and switches, I started to like the lights more.

The main character of my Narrative story, Ed, is a college dropout who lives in New York City, working in food delivery to get through his life. His everyday life is a cycle of waking up, delivering food, sleeping, and visiting a stray kitten that he sees near his apartment building. The only thing he looks forward to in his life is going to the alleyway next to his apartment to feed the cat some fish sticks. His cowardice stops him from making a change in this boring lifestyle. However, when the cat goes missing one day, he panics and does everything he can to find them again. In the scene depicted in the photo, he contemplates on what he’s doing with his life, all for a stray cat that’s not even his. 

When taking the photos, I focused on lighting and the angles especially. I decided to use colored lights, specifically yellow, to convey the feeling of warmth he gets from the cat as well as his cowardice nature. I didn’t want the lighting to be too harsh, since I wanted the photo to look raw to express the character in a more authentic way. I shot in a front view to make the viewer’s eyes go straight to the subject. Although there are other aspects included in the photo, like the props and the background, this angle shows that Ed is the focus of this photo. I chose to shoot this photo in an apartment complex to showcase his everyday life, which is delivering food. The Door Dash bag I used as a prop showcases this as well. The other prop I used was fishstick. It shows the importance of the cat to Ed, as he is keeping the fishsticks with him even during his job. Although he has the fishsticks in his hands, he is looking up into the sky, to show that he is moving on from relying on the cat for his happiness. In Photoshop. I used a cooling photo filter to fix the overly warm color of the photo. This made the yellow look less overpowering and orange. A challenge I faced was that in the original photo, some of the shadows in the background were too strong and distracting. To fix this problem, I used content aware fill to get rid of the harsh lines of the shadows. Next time, I will position the model further away from the wall in order to not get those harsh shadows. Overall, I really like how the colors in this photo look, as it is more muted and doesn’t distract you from the subject of the photo.