Narrative 1

Introduction

The Visual Narrative Projects were all about telling a story through a different means than words. We worked on developing understandable plot lines and characters that seemed appealing and exciting. During this unit, we were introduced to many new audio and video tools in Digital Media in order to be able to fully explore the potential mediums. In Animation we worked on character design and walk cycles as well as group work to create and animation

Story

In English, we started off by studying examples of narrative from other writers. We were tasked to visit the site https://www.shortoftheweek.com/ and find two shorts to analyze. I chose to analyze the animated shorts “An Object at Rest”, a story about a rock just trying to rest but keeps on getting tossed around, and “Timber”, a morbid story of branches trying to stay warm by keeping a fire going. We then read the stories “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes, “The Personal Touch” by Chet Williamson. For these stories, we focused on learning about character conflict and developing a protagonist and antagonist. “Stockings” by Tim O’Brien, and “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, were studied to learn about characters and we compared the main characters to the essay “Characters Are Not Human Beings.”. From this we learned how to define a character and why it is so important to develop qualities that make them unique but are still understandable based on the other information we know about them. Lastly, we used our skills to analyze the characterization “My House” by George Saunders, a story about a man bitter about not being able to buy his dream home because the owner decided not to sell it to him. For this text we focused on how the main character was revealing a lot about himself by describing the interactions he had with Mel Hays, the house’s owner.

Brainstorming

Next, it was time to start creating a narrative. We started off developing a character. I decided on creating a grumpy farmer that was bitter about the world and those around him. I wanted to focus on themes about changing who you are and your ideals. I wanted to highlight that everyone forms opinions though their experiences, which can change over time.

Flight of the Popillia

Behind the Audio Production

To produce the audio version of the story I used a simple camcorder in a closet to make sure that the sound quality was good. Then we edited the audio in Pro Tools in order to mix takes, add sound effects, and enhance voice tones. One thing that was unexpected from the process was how long it took me to find the right sound effects because each of them generated a different feeling and there were so many of them. I also had trouble with voice acting, which made me think about how I could learn to be more expressive not just for audio productions, but in everyday conversations too.

Illustration

An exquisite corpse is a mash-up of 3 images, each drawn by separate people, which is then combined. It was invented by surrealists Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp in Paris, 1925. We used this project to test our illustrator skills at creating something new before our big illustrator project. The order of illustrations and artists goes as follows: Ash Dillon, Nadine Sheridan, Kaylee Jampayai. I liked how snakey a lot of the projects looked and so I drew a dragon like figure. It was hard using the pen tool at first, but I got the hang of it and eventually had a lot of fun making the decorations in the background.

Now that it is spring, I have noticed a lot of blooming trees during my commute to and from school. Thus, I decided to take inspiration from the beautiful sight and planned to engrave a cup with the elegant designs of a blooming tree. I also knew I wanted to add some species of songbird to the tree, but while searching for the correct reference, I decided to use a crow instead. This changed the mood of the design, so I decided to keep the tree barren and spooky instead of decorating it with flowers like I originally planned. This project taught me to embrace the change of a design, not to tether myself to one idea.

I struggled the most with drawing the branch saging downward, as it often looked unnatural or unbalanced in many of my drafts. As most of the time, branches are seen reaching towards the sky, it was hard to find a reference that had exactly what I was looking for. To overcome this, I observed aspects of the designs that were similar. Then, I merged them together while drawing in order to get the correct form of the branch. Through this project, I was not only able to gain skills in using Illustrator, but also creating a design in general.

Music Production

To develop our audio skills, we had to create a parody of a song. We were tasked with recording vocals and adding audio. We were also allowed to work in pairs, so once again a teamed up with my good friend Kaylee to produce this banger of a song. It may sound bad, but it’s still a banger.

Toasted Bread = Toasted Friendship
Kaylee and I decided to write our lyrics about someone burning bread simply because I wanted to make a song about bread. We thought it would be fun to make a song about someone blaming another person for burning bread, because the original song is about Eliza getting mad at Hamilton and the word that sticks out the most is “burn”. Kaylee and I had a lot of fun making the song together and in some of the recordings you can tell we are on the verge of laughing. We actually re recorded one of the parts, but in the isolation booth instead of the music studio, so see if you can tell the difference.

Animation

Walk Cycle

Designing characters is not my strong suit, but I persisted anyway. I knew that I wanted to used a lot of feathers because I had some left over from a project in 6th grade, then I just ran off from there. I ended up with this character. 

This was hard. It was my first time using after effects and it was very confusing. One of the main problems I had was that the green was so harsh that it made a lot of the lighter parts of the puppet look green, so they turned clear when I tried to keyframe them. The shadow also looked slightly green which made the puppet look out of place. I had to adjust the colors of the video to make the puppet match the environment, but that also altered a lot of parts that looked fine, which made the puppet look overeditied. Not to mention, I realized that having feathers on the puppet wasn’t the best choice, as it made them appear green. The 2D cycle was a lot easier, as I didn’t need to to much adjusting with it, so then I just drew a background and exported it.

Lip Sync

The lip sync animation was much more tedious and hard work than I thought it would be. I would not want to be a lip sync animator, so I have mad respect for what they do. I think it is important for be to do things like this where I don’t particularly like them, but gives me the full experience of everything an animator does.

Visual Narrative

The visual narrative project was a lot of fun. It was the first time we worked with other people, so we each were able to use our individual skills to enhance our animated short. We came up with the plot together, then Stella designed the backgrounds, Weiyi designed the person, and I designed the bird. I had so much fun animating the bird flying and its expressions.