The Narrative unit started with a written short story that we created in English class. Then, in Design, we created our own creature consisting of five different animals that exhibited key characteristics of our main characters from our English short story. We also composed a photograph that showed a scene from the story brought to life, using subjects, props, and colored lighting. The project was overall very focused on “showing, not telling”, both in writing and designing.

From this project, I really valued the creative freedom we were given when writing our short story, because we were able to do anything we wanted with the assignment. That kind of freedom gave me the courage to do what I really wanted with the story, and that carried my design projects as well. Creating our creature gave me a really good understanding of how to use Adobe Illustrator which I really value.

STORY

The end product for English was a short story. To prepare to write it, we read many examples of short stories, each about a different topic and written in a different style. Two of these were “The Personal Touch” by Chet Williamson, and “Stockings” by Tim O’Brien. Reading these gave us a better sense of the style in which we wanted to write our own story and how long we wanted it to be. We also used a character brainstorming exercise and plot mapping exercise to better understand our initial ideas, both of which are pictured below.

My final short story followed 7-year-old Isla, who has a very close relationship with her mother and wants to make a birthday present for her at school. However, a classmate starts taking the materials that Isla is using and finally she confronts her classmate, Frances. It turns out that Frances is actually making a birthday gift for her own mother as well, and the two girls are able to bond over their respective love for their mothers. Although Isla had been angry before, she realizes that Frances and she have a lot in common and they become close friends. Attached below it the audio production of my short story, which I recorded and edited using Pro Tools.

ILLUSTRATOR PROJECT

I began my process by sketching out my design on paper. I then uploaded that image to Illustrator and traced it using the pen tool. Originally I wanted to print my design onto a sweatshirt, but I realized that the light color of my design would not print very well onto a gray material, so I decided to make it into a patch. This required me to simplify my design, but making the hat one solid color instead of a pattern, and changing the tail feathers to be more defined. Overall, I am really happy with how the design turned out!

DESIGN PRODUCTION

For our design production, we created both a mise-en-scene (setting the stage) portrait photograph, and a made up creature based on our main character from our English story.

Narrative character portrait

I created this image by pinpointing a specific moment in my story that I wanted to capture. This moment, when Isla is getting frustrated with Frances, contains confusion as well as anger, both of which I wanted to portray. This is why I chose to make the lighting red, to communicate the Anger Frances was feeling. I also chose to crop the photo so that you could only see the arm of Frances’ classmate, because at this point in the story, Frances did not know who this girl was, or why she was taking supplies from her. One difficulty I encountered was trying to direct my models, because they were 5 and 6 years old. Ultimately, I took more of a hands off approach while they drew and painted their own pieces of artwork. I then captured their natural expressions and actions. To edit the image in Photoshop, I brightened it using a “levels” adjustment layer, as well as a “curves” adjustment layer. Finally, I added a vignette to darken the outer part of the image.

Narrative Creature

The process of creating my creature based on my character began with deciding what animals to use. This came from creating a list of characteristics that my character has, and then a list of animals that also exhibit each trait. Then, I decided on a body part from each animal. My final animals included a frilled-neck lizard for playfulness, an ant for honesty, a skunk for impulsiveness, an owl for independence, and a seahorse for being loving. The setting is an underwater classroom. I chose to have it underwater to make it more interesting, and because the head of my creature is a seahorse, so living in the ocean would make the most sense for the creature in real life. I originally used two point perspective, however it didn’t look how I wanted it to, so I switched to one point perspective. I also originally used tables that looked like normal desks in a normal classroom. But, as my scene is underwater, I realized that I should create the tables out of materials found in the ocean, so I decided to make them out of sand dollars and coral, and created a “chalkboard” out of a piece of wood from a shipwreck. Something I might have decided to add is traditional school supplies like pens, pencils, and paper to better portray the art that Isla wanted to create in the story. Ultimately, I am pleased with how my composition turned out, and it was a great way to learn how to better use Adobe Illustrator.