{"id":330,"date":"2023-03-30T09:30:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~TeoT\/?page_id=330"},"modified":"2023-05-09T17:56:12","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T17:56:12","slug":"narrative-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~TeoT\/narrative-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Narrative 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Throughout this unit, we were always asking ourselves the question: ‘How can we tell a story using images?” We practiced essential writing techniques, such as the focus on the visual aspects of a narrative, as well as the policy of showing with descriptive language rather than simply stating what is happening. During this unit we would learn and improve our skills with Wacom Drawing Pads Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Pro Tools, and other apps. All of this culminated in being able to create a powerful, visual story, which could be edited with SFXs into an audio production, paired with a video and given a digitally illustrated album cover. I would not have been able to do any of that at the beginning of the unit, and yet here we are now. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Screenshot of our Adobe Illustrator practice works<\/p>\n\n\n

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Using Illustrator to create patterns and custom color regions<\/p>\n\n\n

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Creating a pattern using various Illustrator tools and using it as a clipping mask<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The English portion of this unit was learning how to show not tell, to create a plot, complex emotions, and character development without directly describing any of that happening. This was a fun challenge to create certain emotions or feelings without describing them, simply by using certain descriptions of the events and surroundings. This required focusing on tone, and every sentence and portion of our stories had to be thoroughly thought out. During this process, we used individual brainstorming and planning techniques that Mr. Greco guided us through, and used these to strategically plan out our work. We also reviewed with small groups to get other perspectives about our work so we could see if our strategies were actually working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time as we developed our visual storytelling in English, we were learning how to produce digital art such as illustrator graphics, website design, and album art. This is when we learned and improved our abilities with several applications, such as Adobe Illustrator and Pro Tools. We used Illustrator to create detailed and precise graphics or drawings and made use of professional tools and techniques to create more polished works. I’ve never really been able to draw on a computer before, and now I think I can more effectively and efficiently create digital art then with a paper and pencil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Our narrative project for English involved developing a flash fiction story, which is a short story centered around a minimal cast of characters and really focusing on a narrative plot arch. In our previous unit we studied famous literary works and thought about what made them so effective. After learning from these, we began drafting our own narrative, starting with brainstorming our central characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was my character starter for my narrative. I was really inspired by the story “The Flowers,” by Alice Walker. This story was from the point of view of a young girl who walked away from her home to the woods. The actual content of the story was really simple and everything was developed by here descriptions of her surroundings. I wanted to do something like this for my story. My final result was a story about a little girl who found herself alone on her birthday. Her Mama is not with her, her favorite thing the sun is covered by the clouds, and nothing seems to be going her way. But she decides to do something about this, and goes on an adventure, growing up and maturing along the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the link to the full flash fiction narrative: https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/1z5CIzFs9yhWdThTlJqVGyUtZEoV8g8B94mTbZF6kdj4\/edit?usp=sharing<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really enjoyed being able to develop a idea and work it out detail by detail. It was sometimes really difficult to get going with writing but once the ideas start to flow it was really enjoyable. It was also satisfying at the end to be able to read a complete and captivating flash-fiction story and know it was ours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our next project was to make a audio production out of a narrative. I decided to write a new narrative for an idea I had that I thought would work really well with sound effects. We used Pro Tools to incorporate these effects and also to improve the quality of our audio recording and add dramatic effects such as scaling the loudness. My idea was for the audio to gradually get louder until the climax, when there was silence. We also created a album cover using Adobe Illustrator, which is shown next to the audio below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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