This unit, we were asked the question “How can I visually express a structured story?” We explored methods such as storytelling, music production, and illustration.
We worked with various professional equipment and applications such as Wacom Digital Drawing Pads, lighting equipment, Pro Tools audio editing, HTML/CSS, and Adobe applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
I valued this project because I was able to experiment with a lot of storytelling and art styles and work with new technologies. We got to try a lot of different projects and really see our ideas become reality. We also started to do some more long-term projects with this unit, which was very rewarding.
Our project in English was to write a flash fiction narrative, which is a very short story. Ours had to be under 1,000 words, which was a challenge. It helped me focus the scale of my story and use my words more carefully.
My story, “Chameleon,” is about a girl named Quibli who, like a chameleon, adapts to her surroundings. But instead of blending in physically, it’s her personality that she changes. She puts on different “personas” depending on who she’s with, always playing a part, evading her true self. The story takes place in a farmers’ market, where we see Quibli on a seemingly mundane errand to pick up some fruit, when she stumbles–literally–into a farm stand that isn’t quite like the others. She meets Waylen, a quirky, friendly boy completely comfortable with himself. As personas and expectations clash, Quibli learns about the power in showing your true colors.
Chameleon
Quibli looked around the bustling farmer’s market, content to silently observe the different personalities present. The spice sellers shouted cheerfully to the popcorn vendors across the street, who called back excitedly about the weather or the latest news. People milled around, laughing and talking as they examined the flowers and fruits on display.
She wanted to go into the almond tent, but the Evans and Rayes families were both there. That would be a conflict of personas. The Rayes family knew her as Vivian, their cheerful, energetic babysitter. But the Evans knew her as Julie, a no-nonsense girl and a quiet neighbor.
She was sure that even if they knew the real her, they wouldn’t like it. That’s why she had become a social chameleon.
Quibli sighed to herself and turned away. She would have to skip the glazed almonds this time. She couldn’t be two different people at once.
Quibli entered the first stall, examining the apples to find the best ones. The benefit of being slightly above average height was being able to reach the back of the bin.
Everything about Quibli was just barely above average: her height, grades, the length of her brown hair, the number of parties she was invited to, and the loudness of her laugh when someone used an especially good pun.
After she had gathered enough apples, Quibli went up to the boy behind the register. Jason. He was tall, with arms that showed his pastimes of working on his father’s farm and playing sports. He broke into a bright smile when he saw Quibli. She mirrored his smile, sweeping her hair over her shoulder and placing the bag of apples on the scale.
He greeted her, “Hey, Amber! Been a while!”
“I know! I’ve been so busy. How’s football going?” She flashed an innocent smile.
“Good.” He paused to squint at his calculations before looking up again. “Come to our game Saturday!”
After she left with the apples and a plan for the weekend, Quibli collected the rest of her list. Grapes from the quiet stand worker whose gray eyes crinkled when she asked how his granddaughter was doing. Oranges from the friendly woman who asked for this week’s gossip with a wink. She exchanged cheery banter with the peach seller as he had her sample every variety.
Quibli counted her change as she walked. There were only a few dollars left. She began to put them away when her foot caught on something.
Her arms flew out for support, sending neatly stacked produce tumbling to the ground.
She scrambled to regain her balance and composure as the vendor hurried over. He was a guy about her age with a head of very red, very curly hair. His outfit was a collection of every type of stripes you can think of, from his shoes and socks to the sunglasses perched on his head, half lost in all of his hair.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yeah, I just slipped,” she said with a grimace. Her heart was racing from her slip-up.Calm down, she told herself. Focus. What’s his personality. What’s yours.
Quibli realized she was still surrounded by a small pile of spilled produce. “Oh, I’m sorry! Let me help you pick this up.” Quibli got down on her knees and began to gather the spilled fruit. “It’s probably ruined! I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he assured her, also kneeling down to pick up. “It’s not like it’s the prettiest fruit in the market.”
She looked down at the fruit she was holding and had to agree. There was an orange with an odd bulge, a bell pepper that looked like it had collapsed in on itself, and an apple that was half red and half yellow, split down the middle.
“See? I sell the rejected produce. The imperfect fruits. The quirky ones!”
Quibli smiled and took a moment to collect her thoughts and solidify her new character.
“I’m Mia.” Kind, thoughtful, friendly but fairly quiet. A safe bet.
“Waylen,” he responded with a charming smile, holding out his hand to shake before realizing she still had an armful of fruit. They laughed, and together finished putting produce back in crates.
As they chatted, Quibli realized how late it was getting. The other shopkeepers had packed up and began to pass by on their way out. Boundaries between stalls were broken down, the different personalities mingling.
Who was she supposed to be if everyone was in one place? They all expected something–someone–different from her. She was about to be exposed and surely rejected. Quibli’s heart sped up again, and she backed away from the oncoming tsunami.
Panic won out. She shut down any personality, put on a fake smile and barely registered the people passing by.
Waylen, on the other hand, readily greeted the stream of people passing by. As the farmers and vendors passed, they all waved to Waylen, excited to see him and exchange a few words before heading home.
Somehow, Quibli’s frozen brain registered this as important.
He was the same person with everyone he spoke to, enthusiastically and unapologetically.
They didn’t seem to be bothered at all by his strange produce, loud laugh, or bizarre outfit. The guy was as quirky as the fruit he sold, but everyone seemed to love him.
She turned back to the table of fruit, her panic forgotten for a moment. She picked up a misshapen tomato.
Waylen came over, the crowd having dispersed. He nodded at the tomato in her hand. “You like tomatoes?”
“I do,” Quibli said. She held it for a moment longer and came to a decision. “I’d like this one. It’s good the way it is.”
Waylen grinned and took her change.
They said their goodbyes, and Quibli was about to leave, when she turned back. “Um– Waylen?”
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“Call me Quibli.”
After writing our stories in English, we recorded ourselves reading our story and edited the audio in Pro Tools, adding music and sound effects. I had fun working with this software to create an immersive experience in the setting of the story.
Finally, we designed an album cover (right) for our story. I went fairly simple, with custom-drawn text and a swirl to represent the chameleon. I especially like the light-streaming effect. The album cover represents my short story “audiobook” on SoundCloud.
In Digital Media, we used Adobe Illustrator to work on various projects, including the banners on this webpage, the album cover for my short story, and many others below.
One fun exercise was the exquisite corpse (left), where we each created a square of an illustration, with set boundaries, without looking at our group’s illustration. Then, we put all the illustrations together.
I decided to draw the wing and back of a dragon-type creature, which was fun experimenting with colors and shading.
Illustrator Project
This was a fun project because we had a lot of freedom and were able to really see our designs become reality. I chose to design a tote bag with the theme of lemons.
I chose this project because I’ve always wanted to decorate a tote bag but I wasn’t sure how or what. I decided to make this one as a gift for my cousin. We are very close friends, and one of her “things” is lemons. She loves all things lemons, and it’s something that we like to laugh about. She’s also very good at giving gifts, while I am not. I thought this would be a great opportunity to make her something special and cute that she can actually use, too.
I experimented with a few different ways to print the design, but my favorite was the one you see in my final product. The design was printed out and we used the cutter to cut out each iron-on element. Then I placed the lemons where I wanted them to go, and we ironed it on. This way, the colors and details of the design come out clearer.
This project helped me experiment with new ways of turning my ideas into reality, and it was very cool to get a physical product from it. I am proud of how this project turned out. It also gives me a great foundation in this type of production that I think I will use in the future.
We learned about audio editing with Pro Tools, including skills like removing vocals from a song and putting songs together in creative ways.
I wrote my parody based on the song “Treat You Better” by Shawn Mendes. My parody is about the overwhelming amount of homework and the struggle of having to choose between school and sleep. The speaker wishes they could sleep much longer than they are, but has to keep up in all of their classes and homework before they can let themself relax. I feel like this is a feeling that a lot of high school students have, so it’s a very relatable topic. Though the tempo is upbeat, I tried to perform to demonstrate stress.
I’ve got work to do
Each second I sleep is time I lose
I just gotta finish the homework that I’m missing
Baby, sleep just won’t do
I know that it’s good for you, but I’ll be fine, cause I got
One more late night to get throughChorus:
I wish I could sleep much longer than I am
And I can never go to bed early like I planned
But before I get some rest
My grades must manifest
All of the hard work that I’ve done
Then maybe I’ll sleep much longer
Longer than I am
Another audio editing project we did was a mashup of songs, which I made fairly simple, with 5 songs under the theme of “dance party” which I think are just happy, upbeat songs.
In Design, we focused on different ways we could visually represent our story and characters, using methods such as illustration and photography. I valued this unit because it pushed me to think metaphorically and find different ways to represent something.
Our main project was to create and illustrate a creature that represented the main character in our story.
The creature I created, the Chameetle Hawk, is a hybrid between five animals that each represent a different characteristic of the main character, Quibli. The hawk head shows how she is observant, and the dolphin fin represents her intelligence. The chameleon body signifies how inconsistent she is, always changing herself. The armored beetle wings show how she is very guarded, and the mouse ears represent insecurity.
This was a fun challenge to create in Adobe Illustrator. After figuring out the animals, color scheme, and how they would fit together, I illustrated the different parts of each animal separately using reference images and joined them together to make a cohesive look and create a whole new animal. Throughout the project, I experimented with combining different tools and strategies on the application to get the result I wanted.
For the background, I used one point perspective, which we learned how to use on Illustrator, to draw an aisle of a farmers’ market, which is the setting in the story. The creature is perched on the handle of a wicker basket, which was a challenge to make it work with the rest of the background, but I think it helps make the creature pop out better from the background. Overall, I am very happy with how my creature turned out.
After creating the creature illustration, we also experimented with photography as another way to visually represent our story and character.
For this character portrait we were tasked with doing portrait photography using a model as the character in our story. I wanted to encapsulate the story and the personality of my character, Quibli, in this photo.
I composed the background to be one of the stalls at the farmer’s market that Quibli visits in the story, with some fruits, flowers and plants. A basket of fruit in which I included a misshapen orange represents the misfit fruit in the story. I wanted the photoshoot to be outdoors, reflecting a true farmer’s market, but it was difficult to find a day when it wasn’t raining.
The farmer’s market is significant because it’s where a lot of people with contrasting personalities come together. In this story, Quibli’s personality is purposefully generic, as she constructs others’ views of her, so I didn’t do anything special with my model’s hair or dress, just like the character herself would. The props she is holding, the different faces, symbolize the different “faces” or personas she puts on for different people. We used various camera and lighting equipment for this photoshoot, experimenting with light, color, angles, and different props.
After working with my model to take lots of photos, I narrowed down to a few favorites that I thought encapsulated the story and its mood. The final step was some editing in Photoshop to fine-tune the lighting and add the vignette effect. Overall, I am happy with the way it turned out. I feel that there is an overall happy mood to the photo, with the bright flowers, which echoes the positive note that the story ends on. At the same time, we see how the character, Quibli, is conflicted between the faces she puts on, and her true self.
