Narrative 1

Introduction

“How well can you visually tell a structured story?”

Throughout the Narrative unit we were challenged to think about how we can use different forms of media to convey a message or story. We learned new media like Pro Tools and Adobe Illustrator, which because of Design I already had some knowledge on. However Pro Tools was a new application that I found quite challenging. The interface itself is scary because of how many buttons and different options are available, but also putting together music is much more challenging than it seems. Adobe Illustrator has grown to be my favorite application that we have learned so far. We went more in depth into all of the different functions and ways to use Adobe Illustrator in Digital Media. By the end of this unit I feel like I have become very proficient in the pen tool from all the various project I’ve used it for. This unit also really taught me the importance of every decision you make in your artwork. From writing stories in English to creating music in Digital Media and creating illustrations in design every decision you make about a project can make a difference in the overall direction and result of that project.

Story

For our first part of the Narrative unit we were tasked with writing a flash fiction story in English. Prior to actually writing our story we learned and read example of other types of flash fiction so we were able to get an idea of what makes a good flash fiction. For me it is a story that can really make and impact and get you thinking in such a short amount of words. Writing isn’t a strong skill for me so I spent a lot of time just trying to start and think of what to write for my story. Ultimately I ended up basing my character kind of on me and what my future life might look like. My story follows Arabella a graduated art student living in London, however she is struggling with money and gets a job at a carnival as a fortune teller when things take a creepy turn for the worst. A large part of this story was brainstormed around Halloween which is also how I got my inspiration for the creepier side of the story.

We also learned more about Pro Tools and how to create and audio version of our story.

Dark, cold, and empty. That was the state of London’s streets as well as Arabella’s bank account. As she scurried through the streets back home to her tiny studio flat, she contemplated her unpaid rent for the month. She’d only have one hundred and fifty two dollars left in her bank account. She didn’t envision her twenties to be spent worrying about making the rent or surviving off of 1 pound instant ramen. Here’s a rough plan of what her twenties was supposed to be like: after going to university at her dream school while partying on the weekends, she was supposed to graduate and get a stable job in the creative world as a graphic designer where she would at least be making enough money to not worry about rent. The reality for Arabella was much harsher. 

It seemed like her luck kept getting worse as it started to pour down on the streets, “Of course it is”, she thought to herself. After all, it was the middle of October which is when London gets the most rainfall. She hurried under a bus stop with her boots clacking on the sidewalk as she ran. As she looked around the bus stop she could see the shattered street light and the trash piled in the corner, and just as she was about to sit down on the dirty metal seats something caught her eye. She wiped her drenched bangs out of her face as she slowly approached an ad on the side panel of the bus stop. It read “Need story writer for fortune telling at the Westminster carnival, pays 35 pounds an hour”. Although Arabella had never been a fortune teller or done anything even related to fortune telling, it was the only job she had come across that would pay enough. She figured it couldn’t be that hard after all, all she would probably have to do is make up something about the person she was giving a reading to and hope that it would come true. As she looked up from the ad the rain had stopped. The universe was giving her a sign.

She applied for the job the next day which was fairly easy, and to her surprise she was accepted. Partially because they didn’t have any other applicants. This made Arabella question a bit about the job since it paid well and looked like an alright job, yet there wasn’t a single other applicant. Ultimately, Arabella was just happy she managed to get any job to pay rent next month. 

The next day she got up leisurely because she didn’t have to be there till 6pm. She settled on an outfit that matched her fortune teller persona she was now taking on. A long flared whimsical purple dress that went with her long black wavy hair. 

As she arrived at the carnival, it was already windy and already dark because of daylight savings. She walked over to the general manager’s office where there wasn’t a person to be seen. She called out if anyone was there and through the darkness a tall figure of a man appeared. “Yes”, he said. She replied “Hi, I’m Arabella, I’m the new fortune teller”. He grunted then directed her to a small red and white striped circus tent where inside lay a sparkling sphere crystal ball that sat in the middle of a burgundy table. 

She threw her jacket and purse in the corner and sat down on the large fur chair that was behind the crystal ball. The man gave her the instructions of how everything worked which basically summed up to coming up with fortunes for people that would probably come true; like “Your going to get rained on later”. She figured it would be pretty easy, but to Arabella’s surprise it wasn’t. 

As her first customer walked through the curtains of her circus tent she started to get a little nervous, but reminded herself that all she had to do was make up some silly fortune. A man and woman in their 30s sat down in front of her and asked for their fortune to be told. She put on a fake smile and moved her hands around the crystal ball like she had seen done in movies. She closed her eyes and started thinking of anything she could possibly say, as she opened them again she looked at the couple and said “You are going to lose something tonight”. The woman asked “What is it I am going to lose”. Arabella not having an answer muttered, only time will tell. The couple, not entirely satisfied with her response, shuffled out of the small tent. Arabella began to think to herself how badly she messed that fortune up, but before she could even reflect on it entirely she heard a large crash and then came a chilling scream that swept the circus. 

She ran outside the tent and looked around, then she saw it. The couple she had just given a reading to, only now the man was lying on the floor, unconscious, with blood pooling around him. Everyone was screaming and everything was in chaos. Her stomach dropped, she told herself that it was just a coincidence, it had to be. After all she just made up the fortune that the woman was going to lose something. It’s not like she could have known the woman was going to lose her husband that cold dark night.

Illustrations

This unit we really dived into learning and mastering Adobe Illustrator both in Digital Media and Design. We’ve created a variety of difference illustrations and creations. We also did one of our first collaborative projects in Digital Media, which was our exquisite corpse project. We we put into groups of 3-4 people and given one art board with outline of the boarders of where we have to draw and connect our piece. We had total creative freedom to draw whatever we wanted. I choose to use the pen tool and illustrate a tiger as my portion of the artwork. Then the art boards were put together and revealed as a final artwork which I have included below. For both our experimental music and short story album cover we had to create our cover artwork using illustrator, which allowed us to further practice our skills in illustrator.

My favorite project we did using Adobe Illustrator in Digital Media was our Illustration Project Choice. For this assignment we were given multiple options of things we could add and illustration to this included things like clothing, stickers, patches, wooden cubes, and tumblers, which is the one I picked. I started off by brainstorming and sketching what I wanted my tumbler to be designed like. Once I had done that I used Adobe Illustrator to create my design. I wanted it to be something very colorful and whimsy. I also wanted to included a stylized character of me in the design. For the final part of this project we had to put together our piece and apply the design to the tumbler. Overall I really liked this project because I was able to design whatever I wanted on whatever I wanted so I could really create something I loved.

While I do love experimenting and using all of the Adobe applications Illustrator is still my favorite one. The pen tool gives so many different options of illustrations you can create and the illustrator project really helped me see how many different things can be create and made with Adobe Illustrator. I have never really done any form of digital drawing or designing so it has overall been a longer but worth while process. Adobe Photoshop is something we dived into at the beginning of the year is a raster based application meaning everything is comprised of small little pixels. Where as Adobe Illustrator is a vector based application which means is uses mathematical paths not pixels to create your illustration. I liked this much better because I could easily expand and shrink my artwork without worrying to much about the pixelation of it.

Music

For the music section of this narrative unit we got to experience singing and playing instruments to create music and creating vocals and instruments from nothing but a computer. Our first project was the music recording project were we got to use the music recording studio and experiences how something who was actually recording a song would feel like. Our experimental music was the opposite of this we didn’t record any live vocals and instead learned how to create music on Pro tools and only Pro Tools. I have no music or instrument experience so this part of the unit was a bit challenging for me to understand and complete.

▶ Dancing Queen by ABBA Cover

⏸ Dancing Queen by ABBA Cover

The music recording project was a group project where we got to pick any song that we wanted and sing a cover of that with our group. We were also given the option to recoding music of instruments if we knew any, but no one in my group knew how to play an instrument. We choose the song Dancing Queen by ABBA which is a classic fun song. We split up the verses by pairs so we could hear everyone better and did the choruses together. We got to use professional microphones in the music recording studio and really got to feel like how a singer would feel recoding something professionally. Mr. Flo controlled the backroom and all of the technical aspects which we will learn more about next year. We also created a collaborative artist statement and cover illustration for our song. Overall I really enjoyed this project and the experience of recording music.

Our main takeaways were the technology setup of the recording studio. We had a lot of fun singing, and learned quickly that it was a lot easier to sing if we were more relaxed. One thing that particularly stood out to us was the headphones and the system that allowed us to hear individual voices and adjust the volumes accordingly. Another interesting thing was that while originally recording, we had separated verses, but we learned that we could all just sing the whole song, and later edit/mix it to cut out mistakes. A third takeaway was working with mics, and how we had to have ourselves and our head positions at a certain distance away from the mic filters to ensure the best audio quality, and avoid any drastic volume changes. Overall, it was very fun and interesting to see the mic and studio setup of the recording studio.

For the experimental music project we learned more how to used Pro Tools and MIDI. We learned how we can used Pro Tools to create instrumental sounds. It could connect to a small piano keyboard or keys on the computer. Then through that we could play keys that would correspond to music and instrument sounds allowing us to play multiple instruments without ever touching an actual instrument. Some of the instruments include the piano, drums, synth, vacuum, and more. We had an option to either create on long music song that had verses and a chorus. Or we could create and interstitial song that featured multiple different types of music, so we could experiment more. I choose to do an interstitial song that way I could experiment with different types of instruments and beats. This project took me a while to complete because of how long I spent mostly picking out what instrument variations I wanted to use. I am really proud of the outcome of my song and am glad to have go a chance to do it.

My inspiration behind this piece was to create something mysterious and alluding but with a twist. I want to include a lot of drum beats and patterns as I felt that would give my music the twist and movement I wanted. Most of my actual music choices though were driven by just experimentation with all the different instruments and seeing how they would pair together. I am most proud of how everything came together in the end, I felt as if I spent a while trying to figure out what things sounded good and what worked that I wasn’t sure how the end result would turn out. But despite never trying anything music related before I am proud of the outcome of this music production. What I valued about learning MIDI Virtual Instruments for music production is the fact that I could play so many different instruments and the variety of sounds I could create all just from one computer. I would have never been able to learn all of the instruments I used in my production but with the help of MIDI I could master all of them and more.

Design

The narrative unit in design mostly focused on using Adobe Illustrator for creating art. We dove more into some of the elements of art and principles of design throughout all of the artwork we created. We did many practice exercises and artworks to practice more specially with the pen tool. Additionally a big part of what we focused on was color palettes and how color can impact our artwork. Along with different types of linear perspective drawings. Our biggest project in Design this unit was our narrative creature project which combined all of the illustrator skills we learning and the flash fiction we wrote in English.

Some of the practice artworks we worked on include our under the sea live paint bucket illustration. Through this project we got more experience with the pen tool and using the live paint bucket tool for the first time. This was our first big Adobe Illustrator project in Design so we had to include a bunch of things to show we understand how to draw and use the application. Additionally because there we so many different elements to include we had to remember to use and name our layers. Another important practice artwork that we did was our bedroom interior linear perspective. This is when we learned one, two, and three point linear perspective. For practice we were tasked with recreate our bedroom using one point perspective. This taught us a lot about how perspective worked especially with a lot of objects needing to be put into that perspective.

Our main project which was our narrative creature was the most challenging for me. Our process started my finding animals that correlated to the personality our main character in our flash fiction had. We also created a color palette based on the emotions of out character. With those chosen we began to brainstorm what parts of each animals we liked and how we could put them all together. My five animals were a ringed seal body, donkey face, tortoise legs, orchid mantis hands, and parakeet wings. The hardest part of this project was illustrating all of the parts of the creature in a seamless way so it actually looked like one creature and not just like we threw on the different limbs. We also had to ensure that our creature wasn’t in an Egyptian stance, meaning it isn’t looking directly at you but rather in a position looking away. The background also had to be a scene related to our story and drawn using some type of linear perspective. This project really pushed my in my Adobe Illustrator knowledge trying to create realistic looking parts of the creature. I also learned a lot about the gradient tool and how to best use it through this project. I am very proud of the outcome of this project and really enjoyed the process of making it.