Introduction
This quarter, we did the visual narrative project in all of our Freestyle classes. This taught us how to create unique stories and bring them to life both visually and auditorily. I really valued how much freedom we got as artists; we chose our own topics for narratives and illustrated whatever we chose for their covers and animations. I really improved as a storyteller with the help of my peers who edited my short story work. I have a much better grasp of how to use dialogue to progress the story. I also learned how to take advantage of illustrator’s features, including the shape, pencil, and pen tools, to create vector art for an album cover and a shirt.
Illustrations
For my illustrator project, I created a vector print for a T-shirt. On the front over the heart, there is a bright red sun, and on the back a mountain with a sword planted in it. My inspiration for this project was drawn from a song I really enjoy called Cautionary Tales. I have synesthesia, and strongly associate different songs with different colors; therefore I gained inspiration from the vibrant reds and navy blues the song exudes. I had originally drawn the mountain in the program Procreate, which uses pixels rather than vector equations. A huge challenge for me was recreating this image in Adobe Illustrator without losing the dramatic brushstrokes and texture of the previous work. I became quickly acquainted with the pencil tool, and started using a variety of stroke styles to achieve a painterly look. If I could change this shirt, I would remove the white outline around the mountain, as it was originally not my intention to have any white in the piece. I am very proud of the mountain I drew, as I don’t tend to draw landscapes and have never made a detailed one before. This project will certainly help me with other ventures in the future, as vector illustrating is very common for people working in design and advertising. I have really grown to respect vector artists, as I find it far more difficult to manipulate than rasterized digital art.
Music Production
The music parody project required us to create a mockery of an existing song, changing the lyrics and recording ourselves singing over the music. We first had to remove the vocals from the original track to the best of our abilities, then write new lyrics and add them over the track. I worked with my friend Leanna, a fellow Freestyle student, to create our parody song ‘Fourteen.’ To remove original vocals in our song Fifteen by Taylor Swift, we filtered out the high pass or higher notes of the song, leaving the instrumental base beneath it. Our lyrics were inspired by the experiences of a high school student through a humorous, yet realistic, lens, as Swift’s writing was idealistic and did not represent our experiences.
Lyrics
You take a long sigh
And you walk through the quad
It’s the morning of your very first day
You wait in the long line in the bathroom and
Try and stay out of all the clouds of vape
It’s your freshman year
And you’re gonna be here for the next four years
In this hell
Hoping that those senior boys
Won’t talk to you at all, ‘cause there’s a four year age gap
They’re old
‘Cause when you’re fourteen,
No one will tell you they love you
You better believe it
And when you’re fourteen
Only thinking about your homework
Count to ten
Take it in
High School’s hell, but you just have to deal with it ‘cause
You’re fourteen
You sit in class next to some random sophomore
You haven’t made a single friend
They turn to you and ask you
To copy your work
You’ll be out of here as soon as you can
All your friends are going on dates
But you have homework
And you’re feeling like crying
And your mom’s yelling loud
Cause you have a single B
And you’re studying for chem until 2 AM
Until 2 AM
‘Cause when you’re fourteen,
No one will tell you they love you
You better believe it
And when you’re fourteen
And college aps make your head spin around
But in your life you’ll do things
Greater than getting an A in your USHAP class
I didn’t know it at fourteen
When all you wanted
Were work free weekends
Wish you could go back
And tell yourself what you know now
Back then I swore I was gonna graduate someday
But I realized I just don’t have the time
Our physics class gave everything we had
To a test that broke our minds
And we all cried
‘Cause when you’re fourteen,
No one will tell you they love you
You better believe it
And when you’re fourteen
Don’t forget to check Canvas or ELSE
I’ve found time can heal most anything
And you just might find who you’re supposed to be
I still don’t know who I’m supposed to be
At Sixteen
Your very first day
Take a long sigh girl
And take a long sigh as you walk through the quad
Animation
For this animation project, we were tasked with creating a group animation featuring the work of all four members. Together, we workshopped a story, designed characters, made storyboards, and assembled a full video with audio. Our narrative featured a character who is reminded of their old friend and reminisces about their memories together. It was an incredibly hard project solely because of how long it took to animate in full color. I would love to thank my classmates Leanna and Letitia for their hard work and for assisting me by drawing some of the backgrounds in my scenes.
