Narrative Introduction
The Narrative Project was a big project that helped me learn many new things such as After Effects, Illustrator, and animating in Photoshop. Learning these new things allowed me to appreciate how much work I have put into this project. Only being allowed to work for a little more than two weeks with my animating team also allowed me to value teamwork in Animation in order to get the job done.
Short Story: Going for the Money
The Short Story was a big English Project that had started in 2019 and resulted into a Digital Media project with us recording our voice reading the Short Story we have written. I am glad I created this recording because it helped me improve my skill at Pro Tools and ended up making the recording sound really good.
It is 7:11 in Kyoto, Japan, where Niklaus Nichols is working at Seven Eleven, sitting in boredom at the store. Niklaus’s best friend Koji Kobayashi and a usual customer, comes into the store.
“Hey Nick! How’s the job going for you?”
“It’s going alright, same ol’ job ya know…, guess I’m starting to get bored of this job. I mean, I’ve worked here for about – what – four or maybe five years?” ,Niklaus replies.
“Yeah man, you should really find a better job than this, especially with your artistic talents. Maybe try to sign up for a job at Nintendo?”
Niklaus thought about what Koji had said, but then Niklaus realizes that he can’t since he doesn’t even have a college degree. His family has given up on him because of how horribly he had done in school.
“Oh yeah,” Koji remembers, “Uh, you could try to get a college degree, so getting into Nintendo shouldn’t be a problem.”
“The pay is so low here, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get into college without much money. Koji, thanks for the help, but I don’t think it’s helping.”
Suddenly, Niklaus gets a notification on his phone. He gets an invitation from The Pokemon Company. It says that they are inviting him to a Pokemon Worlds starting in Kyoto, Japan, in 5 days. Niklaus reads this notification, which brings a smile to his face. He thought to himself, This could be my chance to get enough money to get a college degree!
“This is your big chance man! With your skills at the Trading Card Game, I am sure you will win!”, exclaimed Koji.
Niklaus replied and accepted the invitation. With his practice of spending his off days playing in Pokemon Trading Card Game tournaments, as well as spending most of his earnings on Pokemon Cards probably explains why his parents had disowned him, but Niklaus Nichols has not really realized that yet.
Niklaus spent the next 4 days preparing for his tournament because he was very determined to win. He had skipped those days of work without notifying his boss because all he cared about was winning the tournament.
The day of Pokemon Worlds had begun. Niklaus woke up very early due to his excitement. You can do this Nick, Niklaus thought to himself. He knew for a fact that the Tournament was being live streamed all around the world.
Niklaus looked through his 60 card deck to make sure he knew how to play his cards right. As he waited in the waiting room which seemed like hours, he had finally been called out for his first match. The strategy Niklaus Nichols came up with was an anti-meta deck strategy which allowed him to steamroll over the very popular decks this season. His first match was a breeze, as he expected, because he was able to “predict” the matches he was going to go against.
Niklaus looked through the rule book to make sure he remembered the ways to win a Pokemon TCG match. Take 6 of your own prize cards, the opponent having their deck completely gone, or taking out all the Pokemon on the opponent’s side of the field.
I didn’t even break a sweat, that was so easy with the predictions I made. I hope that I can keep up this streak for the future, Niklaus thought to himself.
After many matches that Niklaus had to face against, he had finally made it into the semi-finals. Since he thought all his matches were easy, he had assumed these matches were going to be pretty easy. All of a sudden, on leaderboard list it showed the name Henry Brand, the champion of last year’s championships.
“Oh boy,” said Niklaus. One of the previous champions is playing again this year. He actually played really well last year. He completely outplayed his opponent although he was using a weaker deck.
The semi-finals match had begun, where Niklaus had easily won against his opponent. Next up was his opponent, Henry Brand. Niklaus had become really nervous because he knew how good Henry was at the game.
When it was finally time to fight Henry, he had gotten his setup correctly, but Henry was playing a counter deck, which completely defeated Niklaus’s setup. Niklaus had lost, feeling defeat. He regretted everything he had done with his life. He wasted his life and money on the trading card game, got disowned by his family due to his failures, and then he lost on live TV. Niklaus felt destroyed. He thought he could just let go of the loss and just go back to his normal job at Seven Eleven, but because he left his job for 4 days straight, he got fired. Everything was not going well for Niklaus. He had realized his mistake for life, and he could not get the life that he wanted back. Suddenly, Niklaus gets an email from Game Freak. The email talked about how they saw Niklaus in the tournament and how interesting his deck was. They gave him an opportunity to work on making and balancing Pokemon cards so the community would be able to make more interesting decks like his. Niklaus saw the email, and took this opportunity with gratefulness. Although he had failed in life, it ended up resulting in happiness. He still felt empty because he knew his parents had still disowned him. I guess my life isn’t in shambles anymore, but what about my parents?, he thought, I should apologize to them. He had called his parents, and they said that they saw Niklaus on live TV. Niklaus gave a lighthearted chuckle, telling them that they were right all along. His parents told him that they were always proud of him, and that he had just felt that he was disowned. He gave them the good news, that he had finally gotten his dream job and finally did not have to work at Seven Eleven. His parents screamed in joy as they told him to come back home. Niklaus came home and gladly spent one week catching up with his parents.
Illustrator T-Shirt: Foodie Friends
The image that I have created from Illustrator are based off my favorite characters from the Pokemon franchise, Snorlax(Bottom) and Munchlax(Top). I feel as if those Pokemon represent who I am as a person. Both of these Pokemon really enjoy food, which definitely relates to my personality of enjoying food. The instant noodles that I have created shows my love for instant noodles when I was younger. I changed the name of the Instant noodles from Maruchan Instant Lunch to Marusan Quick Brunch, not because I wanted to protect myself from copyright infringement, but just something I enjoy doing. I really enjoy just making up names for already made things such as the Marusan example.
I really am proud of the work I have done for this Illustrator Project. Not only do I get to wear this shirt around, but also I get to feel proud that I designed the shirt. I spent 1 and a half weeks deciding what I wanted to do for the project, because I wanted it to be something I will be proud of for the rest of my life. I especially valued my friends in this project because they helped me decide what I wanted to do for this project. They made suggestions and gave me encouragement by saying how well made my design was, which made me really happy.
The project I have created put a lot more deep meaning of my personality than I expected. At first I just thought this would look really cute, but all the things I put together really told how I felt about myself. I felt happy being with other people, as well as the Snorlax holding up the Munchlax also showed that I also enjoy helping others out. I really want to thank my friends again for helping me with this project.
Illustrator Light Cover: Familiar Faces
The image that I have created from Illustrator are based off of characters from the Pokemon franchise. The Geometric Light Cover that I created shows my love for Pokemon. As you can see the characters shown in the face is the most popular character in the franchise, Pikachu. Then there is another character with a somewhat recognizable face, Gengar.
I am very proud of the work that I have done for the Geometric Light Cover Art. I learned how to use Illustrator better and that taught me the skills to create something that I never knew how to create before. This Light Cover covered things such as learning how to use the pen tool which really helped me shape the Light Cover Art.
Mood Scene
The Mood Scene project was a project that took over 3 months to complete. We had first created our puppet using metal wires in order to create the skeleton to be able to bend parts of the body to create the animation, and we also had made our very own backdrops that went with this puppet. Also, we created a 2D character which took part in our Mood Scene to make two characters moving in the animation. I am very glad to finish this project because it turned out to look really good.
Character Bio
Narrative Animation
The Narrative Animation was the most difficult project I have ever worked on so far. With less than three weeks to work on the project, my team had to work together to put up a 40 second or more animation. I had thought it was going to be impossible because we had spent over 3 months working on the mood scene project which resulted to be 4 seconds long. Luckily we managed to finish because of our spectacular teamwork. Finishing the project made me really happy because the animation had turned out to be as my team had planned. An oversimplified version of this animation was rice turning into mochi.