Short Story

In English, I was tasked with writing a short story. A simple premise, yet deeply engaging. I was challenged to draft the characteristics of my main character, the environment they found themselves in, their mannerisms, and their plot arc.

The story revolves around an old and bitter man, Marty, who is forced to come to terms with the emotional trauma he inflicted on others. Interestingly enough, I wasn’t really inspired by any real-life scenario that I could pull from. Additionally, I enjoy writing and reading sci-fi and fantasy stories much more than realistic fiction, so the creation of this story was definitely a bit out of my wheelhouse.

Beyond the drafting and editing of my story, I also was tasked with using Pro Tools, a digital audio workspace, to create a comprehensive audio recording of my story using my own voiceover and a host of sound effects. Now, in my opinion, for as good as Pro Tools is at live recording mixing and sequencing, it is a severely outdated software on the composition and creation side of audio production. Mixing my vocals was no problem using the suite of mixing tools available, but arranging sound effects and shaping them to my liking was nothing short of a nightmare, no thanks to Pro Tools’ awful automation matrix. I think I’ll be sticking with my trusty ol’ FL Studio next time.

In addition to recording and producing an audio version of my story, I had to create an “album cover” that would be included with the SoundCloud upload (see above). I used a handful of clever techniques in Adobe Illustrator to create a grass texture that would serve as the background, then I added text and accents. A simple composition, but very effective.

Song Mashup

For this project, I was required to mash up 5 songs of our choice.

My track is a pretty simple one, I chose 5 different songs (track list below) from a Japanese hardcore artist called USAO. His music is great to make mashups with because they are typically of the same genre, the same tempo and sometimes the same key. There isn’t really a theme to my mashup, I just had some fun throwing together a few of USAO’s songs.

It was quite fun to jam out while putting this mashup together. I’m sure I definitely got a few side eyes from my peers during class.

Parody Song

Quite shortly after the song mashup project, I moved on to creating a parody song using my own vocals. The song I chose is 99.9 by MOB CHOIR (aka the opening song to Mob Psycho Season II, for all you anime watchers) since, at the time of making this parody, I was completely obsessed with J-rock. In retrospect, it’s still a great song. I love the upbeat melody and way-too-over-the-top drum line, plus that insanely groovy bass.

The original song is about the main character of the show, Mob, finding himself and coming to terms with his existence. I totally flipped that on its head for my parody, which is sung from the perspective of the inner voice of an angsty teen that just started high school and is struggling to make friends. I wouldn’t say I relate to that scenario 100%, but I am definitely not much of a social person and through my lyrics, I got to vent out some of my social anxiety. Additionally, this parody was a bit of a strange project for me, for the most part being that, while I like to sing, my voice is also a huge source of dysphoria. I have tried my hand at voice training, usually without much success (especially in singing), but I’m hopeful that in a few years from now, I’ll be more confident in how my voice sounds.

Illustrations

Much of the Narrative 1 unit was spent on learning how to use Adobe Illustrator, through a variety of practice projects and group work. Like I mentioned in the introduction section above, I had never used Illustrator prior to this group of projects, but now I can say that I have a solid entry-level understanding of the program and I really appreciate how easy it is to make great-looking designs using Illustrator.

To the right is a screenshot taken from my practice session, which spanned out over 15 artboards and a couple of weeks worth of class. We learned the ins and outs of Illustrator– how to use patterns, how to align objects, how to wrap text, and how to use the almighty pen tool, to name a few.

Lastly, our major part of the Illustrator project was to create a completely original design that we would translate to a physical medium, whether that be on an article of clothing, a sticker sheet, a lightbox, or any other tangible object we could create a design for.

My idea for the project was to create a cyberpunk/neo-gothic design for an article of clothing, which ended up being a crewneck sweatshirt. I was inspired by the general aesthetics of cyberpunk and techwear, but I also drew some minor inspirations from cyber-sigilism, and some Y2K-adjacent asset styles. The general world building behind the design is as follows— in the far future, an entertainment technology company called NEOSOUL is creating products that let their users “step in” to the media they consume by using neural uplink devices. Their motto, as seen on the back of the sweater, is “REALITY CONFINES. TECHNOLOGY LIBERATES,” a nod to the idea of escaping reality through the experience of “being inside” your favorite pieces of media.

It might sound obvious, but the biggest way I felt myself growing through this project was in developing the know-how to pilot Adobe Illustrator. Before this project (and the handful of warm-up projects we had done in preparation), I hadn’t ever touched Illustrator. I was familiar with other Adobe applications, like Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop, but I had never found myself wanting or needing to use Illustrator. Now, in retrospect, I’m really glad I had the opportunity to learn how to use it. I remember having a revelation midway through the project, thinking to myself, “Wow, I could use this program to make a bunch of logos, assets, or any amount of visual elements I might need for anything in the future now,” specifically because of how streamlined Illustrator is for creating those types of media.

An example of group work for this unit would be the Exquisite Corpse illustration, which might sound familiar if you read through my Conceptual project page. This time it involved creating an illustration that would span three artboards, each made by one person. As a group, we were allowed to coordinate the theme for our illustration, but we weren’t allowed to see what we each had designed until all three sections were put together.

My group chose to create this semi-isometric interior shot in black and white. The perspective grid tool was undoubtedly my best friend while making this illustration. My section is the one on the right, and all things considered, I’m pretty proud of how it turned out. For such a basic illustration, I think it definitely manages to convey the illusion of depth (especially the shelves and desk).

Character Design

One of our main projects from the first semester of animation was to design and animate, both physically and digitally, an original character. The very first part of this project involved creating a multiple-dimension design of my character. I actually created a near 1-to-1 replica of an original character that I had designed a couple of years ago as an online persona.

Once I had created the design and biography, I moved on to fabricating the actual puppet. I used a mixture of modeling clay, paper, watercolor, fluff, felt, and white electrical tape. Additionally, I created the underlying armature using cut toothpicks, iron wire, and moldable plastic, with holes drilled in the feet to help the model stand up.

This part of the project was DEFINITELY a challenge. I had to file down the foot plastic several times and if I wasn’t careful, the armature would get super twisted. The model was also very top-heavy and making it stand up without looking awkward was certainly a chore.