Introduction
The Visual Narrative Project at Freestyle asked us to explore the art of storytelling through a variety of different mediums. We crafted short stories with an emphasis on sensory detail, learned how to produce complex graphics in Adobe Illustrator, created experimental music and short story audio productions using Pro Tools, and produced large-scale narrative animations. Each project built upon an interconnected web of storytelling, teaching us how to truly express ourselves through narrative.
During the Visual Narrative Project, I valued the exposure I was given to so many advanced programs and tools for creative expression. I vastly improved my ability to apply my skills in written storytelling to producing narrative audio productions using carefully placed music and sound effects, and further developed my skills in visual storytelling through digital art and animation.
Story
In English, we were challenged to write a Flash Fiction Story based around an original character that we would create and flush out over the course of the unit. I chose to write my story about a fantastical lamb-adjacent creature named Kauri.
The character questionnaire and plot map were assignments we completed in English to help develop our characters and the plot of our stories. The character questionnaire involved answering a wide array of questions about the character as if you were the character themselves, and the plot map was a visualization of the progression, climax, and conclusion of our stories.
The audio story production, in essence, asked us to create audiobooks out of our Flash Fiction pieces from English. We recorded ourselves reading our stories, then edited the audio together with sound effects and background music to create an engaging and effective work of audio storytelling.
I really valued the experience of experimenting with different ways to present the same story, and learning an interdisciplinary approach to engaging storytelling– creating a sensory experience for the listener.
Lammie
The sun was bright that day. Light glistened atop thick patches of vibrant green grass as it rustled in the warm breeze, wildflowers peppering the ground. On one side of the grassland, massive trees climbed toward the sky as far as the eye could see. On the other, small stone houses dotted the horizon, sitting atop the flat apex of a large hill. The two sides sat parallel from one another, separated by a vast grassy meadow. Kauri squinted their eyes, straining to spot the hunters through the forest. Their long, fuzzy ears twitched as the men’s footsteps grew louder and louder, grass crunching under their feet. They were getting close now; Kauri could smell it. They tied their mask into place and squatted behind the brush, careful to remain out of sight. Dappled light shone through the trees, illuminating the angular form of a human face carved from deep brown wood, the eyes completely solid save for mere pinholes to conceal Kauri’s rectangular pupils. The mask boasted two large ram horns attached at the forehead that curved around Kauri’s ears in an elegant arc.
Crunch. The hunters clumsily made their way deeper and deeper into the forest. Kauri’s breath quickened as the mask pressed up against their mouth, lifting it slightly to allow for fresh air to seep underneath. Closer, just a bit closer…
CRACK. The sound rang through the air as a hunter’s bow went flying, snapped in two. As he looked around in bewilderment, Kauri’s hooved foot swept under his leg, sending him flying backwards. The others hastily scanned their surroundings, looking down just in time to see their bows had been snatched from their hands before a whirlwind of quick and deliberate jabs to their necks sent them collapsing onto the ground one after another, unconscious.
Kauri took only a moment to breathe before grabbing the men by their shirt collars and hauling them out of the forest. Their chest heaved as they dragged the men across the ground, their light rosey-brown dress scraping along the rocks and sticks blanketing the forest floor. With one final shove, they cast the unconscious men back into the grassy valley, leaving them to return to their village empty-handed as all hunters that crossed Kauri’s home did. With their work finally over, Kauri hastily took off their mask, gasping for air. Their eyes slowly adjusted to the brightness outside, the sun shining like a beacon through the forest canopy. They’d have to take Eden out to enjoy this beautiful day.
“Did you win, Lammie?”
Kauri whirled around, locking their gaze on the small child that had crept up behind them. Eden had never learned Kauri’s real name. When they first found her wandering through the forest, Kauri’s half-lamb appearance had only startled the girl for a moment before she excitedly blurted out the name and flung herself into Kauri’s fuzzy arms. Lacking human vocal cords, they couldn’t correct her—not that they’d have the heart to, anyways.
Kauri gave her a stern look that said what are you doing here? Eden should have known better than to wander out by herself.
“I was hoping…I could help this time,” the little girl said sheepishly, “but I guess you already beat them.” Eden knew very well of Kauri’s hunter-sabotage efforts, not only from Kauri themself, but from the other villagers before she ran away. Tales of some wild creature attacking hunters in the forest ran rampant through the village, but few took the spooked men seriously. Still, hunters continued to return home bruised and empty-handed, with stories of encountering a masked attacker that they could’ve sworn had hooves…
Kauri shook their head. As Eden’s guardian, they had taught her how to thrive in the forest, but that did not include fighting the enemies that wandered inside. That was Kauri’s job, and Kauri’s job only.
“I know I’m too little, but I just thought…”
Snap.
Kauri’s body tensed. What was that?
Crunch.
Their eyes widened. Rushing to put on their mask, they flung out their arm, sharply pointing in the direction of their home as they stared at Eden with a desperate urgency. Run.
Turning toward the source of the noise, Kauri watched in horror as another hunter flung himself out of the darkness of the forest, holding a long, shiny weapon they had never seen before.
BANG!
It happened in an instant. A small hole, barely the size of a blueberry, appeared in the tree directly behind Kauri. Suddenly, they felt a burning sensation spread across their left thigh. Scanning the area around his target, the hunter’s expression quickly shifted to one of horror. He immediately turned his back and fled, flailing his limbs about as he tripped over himself running. Mystified, Kauri turned around to see what sight had driven the hunter away…
Wait.
Wait.
No.
No.
NO.
Eden hadn’t run. Instead, she had stood where she felt safest. Right behind her Lammie.
Kauri laid the girl onto a soft patch of grass and desperately scanned her bloodied shoulder for the wound, straining their eyes to see through the dark brown haze.
RRRIP.
They tore off their mask, tossing it to the side before hastily pulling off strips of their dress to wrap tightly around the injury. Eden’s breathing steadied, and Kauri hoisted her into their arms before carrying her off deep into the forest. Deeper, and deeper, until no one would ever be able to find them again.
And so, the hunters returned in swaths, no longer hindered by the mysterious hooved creature they all so feared. As group after group returned home bursting with game, Kauri gradually became nothing more than a myth. But no matter how many came and went, none of them noticed the mask on the ground that had been left to rot.
Artist Statement
During this project, I feel that I vastly improved my ability to pair sound effects with audio, and strengthened by skills in using Pro Tools as an audio editing tool. By spending so much time searching for just the right sounds and carefully integrating them into my story, I have built a significant amount of confidence in my capabilities to use sound effects to strengthen my audio storytelling. Through this experience, I confirmed that I am an extremely detail-oriented person who will go to great lengths to achieve even a slightly higher level of quality in my work. I also learned that I struggle a lot with the tedious nature of audio editing.
I struggled a lot throughout this project with voice recording and adding sound effects to my story. Due to the fact that properly enunciating my words is a frequent challenge for me, the process of recording my audio for this project was extremely lengthy and frustrating. I would often have to re-record the same line at least three times to get a take in which I didn’t trip over my words or run out of breath. I tried my best to combat this by taking deep breaths, drinking plenty of water, and practicing lines slowly and carefully before hitting record. In addition, adding sound effects to my story was by far the most time-consuming and exhausting part of this project. I was determined to get each sound just right, and would painstakingly search through the sound effects catalogue for what I had in mind. To make this process a bit easier on myself, I would search for the sound effect I needed on YouTube (royalty-free, of course) to more directly find the type of sound I was looking for.
I would change the distribution of sound effects throughout the story, particularly around the middle. This is because I have plenty of sound effects at the beginning and end of my story, but they are far more sparse around the middle. I would add several sound effects around that middle section to make the overall distribution of sound effects more consistent.
I am most proud of my use of music to build the tone of my story, especially toward the end where the music cuts off at the most tense part, then resumes during the conclusion. I love the feeling that the end of the music leaves you with as the story concludes. I’m also very proud of the effort I put into the sound effects, and I love how they turned out.
I will use my newfound experience in sound effects layering to enhance any audio productions I create in the future. Whether it be a podcast, an audio project for another class, or even a video with a strong audio element, I will have confidence that I can strengthen the project and add a new layer of emphasis and immersion to my work through sound effects.
This project gave me an immense amount of appreciation for all complex audio productions. Now that I know just how time consuming it is to simply edit together audio tracks, not to mention add music and sound effects, I have a much more informed understanding of the level of work and dedication that goes into the audio productions of others. I highly value this craft and those who put so much effort into it.
Illustrations
For this Narrative 1 website page, we were required to produce 5 unique section banners in Adobe Illustrator to integrate into our webpage using CSS. Below are the 5 section banners that I created. I decided to follow a simple geometric theme and unified color palette for thematic consistency, as I didn’t want my banners to feel out of place or crowded. The simple shapes allow for better readability of the section titles, and the elements of repetition make them recognizable as parts of a set.
The Exquisite Corpse project asked us to collaborate with three other students in our Digital Media class to create one hybrid artwork. One illustrator file was created with four sections, and the border between each section was marked with two lines. These lines indicated where our artwork on that section should start/end, so that when the sections were all put together, each individual piece would flow into the next one. We then created duplicates of that file for each person so that we could work on our artwork independently, and combined them all back together once everyone was finished.
The Illustrator Project was an open-ended assignment that challenged us to create virtually whatever we wanted in Adobe Illustrator, then apply our design to a physical product. I decided to make an illustration of my character Calypso to then turn into a hoodie. For this artwork, I almost exclusively used Illustrator’s brush tool in conjunction with the direct selection tool and Live Paint. I learned a lot about creating art in Illustrator and how to apply my skills in raster drawing programs to vector programs.
Artist Statement
For my Illustrator Own Choice project, I chose to make an illustration of my favorite character of mine as a hoodie design. I was inspired by the works that many other artists have made as “merch” for their original characters, and wanted to make something that could display my own character in a fashionable way. This project taught me a lot about applying my existing skills with raster drawing programs to Illustrator. Almost my entire illustration was made using Illustrator’s brush tool, which I greatly improved my ability to work with. This approach had a relatively steep learning curve for me, as illustrator’s vector brush strokes function far differently than brush strokes would in a raster program. For example, when you lay down a stroke of color, the program will modify and smooth out the path of the line you drew, which can cause gaps to appear in blocks of coloring or certain lines to look off from what you wanted. This was something that I eventually got used to, and I was able to deliberately change the way I drew each line to work around it. I also consistently made use of the direct selection tool to adjust certain brush paths, and used the live paint feature for a large portion of my coloring.
I am most proud of the anatomy and posing of my characters for this project. Accurate anatomy is one of the things I struggle with most in my art, and though the anatomy in this piece still is far from perfect, it’s one of my best attempts at achieving some level of accuracy. I also like the triangular composition of the three figures, and am proud of how that arrangement leads your eye around the design. With my newfound confidence in using Illustrator’s brush tool, I will be able to produce complex vector illustrations in Illustrator for any future projects to come. I have also gained new appreciation for others’ work with Illustrator, as I am more familiar with the challenges of this program and how difficult it is to master its tools.
Working in Illustrator was an extremely different experience from using raster programs like Photoshop. There was no traditional “erase” tool, only deleting anchor points and messing with them until the stroke looked right. I struggled to work around the lack of options for brush types/shapes, but overall became very comfortable using the same pressure-sensitive calligraphy brush for my entire artwork. Though I was able to color with confidence using only Illustrator’s tools, for the line work, I relied heavily on the sketch I had drawn on paper and ended up using it as almost my sole guide for the entire time I was drawing the line art.
Music
The Experimental Music Project served as the ultimate application of everything we learned in Digital Media about using Pro Tools. We were challenged to create a full 36 bar song using only (or mostly) digital MIDI instruments within Pro Tools. We used effects and careful editing to produce the sounds we wanted, layering various elements and instruments to enhance the melody.
My process for producing my experimental music in Pro Tools mostly involved creating a melody on the MIDI piano, then tweaking it and applying it to various XPand tracks. I then played around a lot with the sounds I could get from the XPand plugin, layering lots of different effects to get the vibe I was going for.
Artist Statement
My inspiration for my song largely came from “God Race” by Metaroom. I really loved the sense of surrealness that song had, and found that I wanted to create my music in a similar fashion. My aim was to produce a dramatic, yet light and airy sound. I also took inspiration from how “God Race” focused on one melody, then added layers to that melody to give the song depth. This was my main motivation for structuring my song the way I did. I am most proud of the piano melodies I created; I feel that they go nicely together and produce pleasing transitions between each segment of the song. I also really like the layering of the Vacuum and Boom Drums in the second segment of the song (approximately bars 10-18). I really value learning how to use virtual instruments for music production because it opens so many doors for me to be able to dabble in this craft without having access to many instruments or a large studio at home. If I need to produce a song for any purpose, I can do so purely with the tools accessible on my computer, no matter where I am or what sound I need to create.
Animation
The biggest project of our Narrative 1 Unit in Animation was our stop motion puppet. We were challenged to create an original character and create a physical, pose-able puppet of them to use in a walk cycle composite animation. The final product is a digital, 2D version of the character walking by their physical, 3D puppet version. We composited the final animation in Adobe After Effects using color keying and the Roto Brush tool.
Above is my illustrated character design and bio for my character, Kauri, who I also featured in my flash fiction production in English. Next to my character design and bio are photos of my final puppet in various poses showcasing its detail and range of movement. I really love how my puppet turned out despite some of its flaws, and I am very proud of the level of effort and detail I put into it. For example, I sculpted Kauri’s face and made their mask removable, instead of sculpting the mask directly onto their head. In addition, I made all of their clothes removable; the dress has a zipper in the back, the collar uses detachable snaps, and the pants have a working drawstring with elastic sewn into the base of the legs.
These are my 2D and 3D character walk cycles, respectively. I’m far more pleased with the 2D walk cycle because I could use digital tools to make it look very clean and polished. On the other hand, shooting my puppet’s walk cycle at home was a very clunky process and ultimately turned out far sloppier.
Above is my final product for the stop motion puppet project! There are several things that I would like to change about it, like the quality of my puppet’s walk cycle or the fit of the puppet’s dress and collar, but overall I am very proud of the work I did on this project.
This is my LipSync Animation! For this project, we were asked to create a small set of mouth shapes and apply them to a character in sequence so as to match the dialogue of an audio clip. I decided to make a tiny clown sing Into the Unknown from Frozen 2 because I thought it would be silly. In order to use the section of the song I wanted, I ended up making my animation almost a minute and a half long even though we were only supposed to do 10 seconds. But it was worth it! I really love how this animation turned out and I think it’s adorable.
Our final project of the Narrative 1 Unit in Animation was a group project narrative 2D animation. My group consisted of myself, Jaidyn, and Joshua. I managed to convince my group mates to do the animation about one of my characters because she’s super cool (in my humble opinion). Our story was that Calypso (my character), the guardian of Saturn, notices a giant asteroid approaching the planet and rushes to stop it. It crashes into Saturn’s rings and scatters debris all over the place, leaving Calypso to clean up the mess. After she succeeds in repairing the damage, she pauses to rest and gaze into the stars. Jaidyn animated the shots of the asteroid coming in and the explosion cloud over the rings, Joshua made the backgrounds, and I animated all the shots of Calypso (and the sequence of her fixing the damage from the explosion). I also composited the final animation together in After Effects, and Jaidyn added the music/sound effects and credits.
Overall, I’m pretty proud of how this animation turned out considering all of the crazy issues we faced trying to get it in on time. I ended up staying up until 7 a.m. to finish compositing the animation the day before everyone’s narrative animations would be showcased in class. This was when I made the entire climax of the animation from scratch in one sitting because we actually didn’t have one at that point– we only had the introduction and the conclusion. I’m proud of myself for being such a big part of making this animation happen and working extra hard to make it as complete as it could be. Even though the actual narrative aspect of this animation is pretty weak and unclear, I know that I did my best to make it work and I’m still really proud of the visuals of the animation.