Narrative 1

Introduction

In the Narrative Unit, we practiced communicating character and story arc through descriptive storytelling, narrative digital art, storyboards, films, and animations(animations for me). We learned how to communicate with variety of professional application such as Wacom Digital Drawing Pads, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, and Avid Pro Tools.

During the unit, I tried my best to put as much as effort as possible although learning Illustrator and story writing were pretty hard for me. Even though there were many obstacles I encountered, I valued hardworking and enjoyment to produce the best work.

Story

In English, we did a Character Questionnaire and set up the Plot Map for out story before starting the process of story writing. We essentially roughly wrote about our characters and stories. The inspiration of my story is actually the story of myself but with the change of the name and adding some new details. For the audio, I recorded it in my closet with a real recorder. I chose to record the audio in my closet to produce the best quality of audio.

Writing and recording my story were a little challenging for me since English is not my first language. However, I always value hardworking and best quality of work whenever I attempt to produce something. I tried my best to write the story in the most compelling way and eventually revised it. Recording the audio was actually harder than writing. My condition was not so good at the night I chose to record the audio. It spent me 30 minutes to finish the recording because I kept on messing up. Even though the process of recording was frustrating, luckily, I had Pro Tools to edit the audio so I had the opportunity to make it sound better and cleaner.

Move

She can’t move. Just can’t. It’s like something is grabbing her so hard. She does not know where to go so she is just standing there, in the hallway by herself; people are walking around and talking to one another, seems like everyone has known each other for years. She does not really understand what they are saying though… She takes out her phone and just start texting her friends. Oh yeah, She forgot. It’s midnight for them now. She checks the time. Five more minutes. “What’s my first period? Oh, math. I hope I can talk to someone, someone nice.” she thought to herself. Ringggggg.

Okay it’s time to go… People start to walk faster than they were before the bell rang. The classroom smells like some sweaty guys and pencils that haven’t been used for many years. People start to come in, they’re still talking with each other. Jing’s has an odd expression on her face. She is squeezing her eyebrows like they are about to connect one another, her eyeballs keep moving around in a fast speed, and her lips are whiter than usual; the sweat on her body is like heavy rain. The teacher tells everyone to sit anywhere they like. She chooses the one that is closest to the door and take out her transparent pencil case out of her backpack. She can see the pen grandpa gave her when she was eight. It is pink and sparkly, grandpa knew that her favorite color is pink. Living with grandpa when she was still back in Taiwan was so fun and so happy. He used to cook every day for her because Dad and Mom were all too busy. He would also tell her stories and ask her if she was doing fine at school every day…until he couldn’t move or speak anymore, and then he passed away. She misses grandpa.

The class starts as the second bell rings. The teacher, Ms. Kim, asks everyone to introduce themselves to their tables. This is the moment Jing was worried about. She starts to sweat even more and fidget even stronger. The girl that looks like she put on 3 layers of mascara at her table just starts to talk  when Jing still can’t even process everything that just happened. Jing’s brain is totally blanking out, she can’t even hear what people in the table are saying. She realizes it is her turn when people in her table start to stare at her. They look at Jing as if they are looking at a new creature discovered on the planet. It feels like they are looking into her soul and her soul is being torn apart, but there are no expressions on their faces. “Uh…hi…I aM JiNg…”. 

“Oh no no no no, I messed up”, she thought. She can totally know she messed up by their trading of eye contacts. “They must think I am stupid and weird now, that’s awesome”, she thought again. They just start to smile awkwardly as if Jing has farted in front of the whole class. And Jing stops talking; there is no more conversation.

Jing starts to look around the room to pretend that she is a “normal” person. Then she sees a confident girl talking loudly to people around her. The girl’s skin is so much paler than Jing’s, her eyes are as blue as the ocean, and her hair looks like the sun in strings form. She smiles with showing her white teeth, so white that they might be as white as a sheet of paper. She is wearing a denim jacket, a crop top, and a mini skirt. Jing stares at the girl like she wishes herself was the girl.  “I like your jacket, Emma!”, someone in her table says while pointing to her denim jacket. “Thanks! My mom bought it for me last week.” Emma replies. Everything on Emma looks so perfect on her. Not like Jing, she’s been wearing the same t-shirt, jacket, and a pair of jeans for the past 5 years. Only the pair of white Adidas are new. Mom bought them for her before they moved here. 

Kids in class are not doing much in class today since it is the first day of school. Ms. Kim just simply asks them to answer different questions about themselves to their tables. But Jing’s mind is all on whether she should make friends with Emma. Emma looks so nice but she also looks too popular. Jing has seen those Disney movies where pretty white girls are always mean to other people yet they are popular. Maybe that’s why people love them. However, Emma looks like an actual nice person. She gives everyone the big smile and compliments every single one of them. Jing wonders if she would compliment her shoes. Then she stands up slowly when Emma is not talking with anyone. Jing’s steps are so small like a baby’s steps. Every step she takes her legs become weaker. But she just keeps on walking, inch by inch.

“Hi…I am Jing…”, she says to Emma. 

Jing thought Emma would be nice to her just like how she is nice to everyone else. But Emma just starts staring at her like she did something wrong. Emma gives her an awkward and sarcastic smile, which causes her stomach to start to burn. She does not know what to do and she’s feeling dizzier and dizzier. Jing slowly turns back and walks back to her seat. The steps are weaker than the steps she took when she tried to approach Emma. She tries to not fall by leaning on the desks on every step she takes. She looks at Emma and see how she is talking with her friends, then they laugh and look at Jing. “ Did you hear her accent? And did you see her outfit? That was so funny!” Emma says to her friends with the ugliest smile.

Now she knows that Emma is just another popular girl. She was right. Emma is mean and she is only nice to people that look rich and wear fancy clothes. Just like the girls in the Disney movies.

Jing walks to the cafeteria during lunch. She finds a place that is near a corner and sit down. She takes out the Chinese food her mom packed for her. There is Kung Pao Chicken, some vegetables, and some rice. But she doesn’t feel like eating since math. Nothing feels right and every piece of her body hurts. Her face is getting paler and paler, there is no redness on her face, like a zombie. Her eyes start to form tears but she tries to hold them back by squeezing her eyes.

Suddenly, a bunch of girls approach her. “Hi, can we sit with you?”, one of the girls says with a smile. Jing does not know if the smile is real anymore. She stares at them for a good 2 seconds and nods. Then they sit down with their lunch.

“You are Jing, right?”, the girl talks to her again, and Jing nods “I’m in your math class. I saw how Emma treated you. She is always like that. Just nice to people she really wants to be nice to. Don’t worry too much.” She gives her an awkward smile and nods again. 

“Oh, by the way, I am Madison, just call me Maddie.” she says. 

“Hi…”, Jing says while looking to everyone. Every one of the girls smiles at her. The smiles are different from Emma’s. They somehow…warm her heart and make her happier. Their eyes look soft like really nice paint painted on a new canvas. They introduce themselves one by one to her and just chat with her about anything, like real friends. Like the friends she used to have in Taiwan.

“Maybe not every girl at this school is like Emma. Maybe I should give it a shot again”, she thought. Jing starts to talk more about herself, and the girls don’t seem annoyed or disgusted. 

She does not feel any pain in her body anymore, and her heart is warmer than this morning was, too.

Process of Editing the Audio

Illustrations

Geometric Light

Final Design
Printed Result
Process of Designing the Geometric Light

The title of my Geometric Light Cover is Fun Winter. Winter can be exhausting and maybe sad for some people because of the coldness and the shorter day time. But winter can also be really fun! In winter, people can build snowmen at places that snow, so I designed a snowman that has Christmas vibes. I also included a shooting star because winter is also a holiday season. I thought about objects that relate to Christmas and the first thing that came into my mind was the star on the top of a Christmas tree. I designed a shooting star instead of a regular star to symbolize wishes to hope that people’s wishes or dreams can come true. This project took me a while to get the results I wanted because I had to learn a new Adobe application called Illustrator. Illustrator is kind of different from Photoshop(I personally prefer Photoshop), there were a lot of new tools for me to learn how to utilize them. Even though it was a little frustrating and exhausting to process everything I learned in a short period of time, I’m glad I did not forget to value enjoyment and hardworking to achieve what I was hoping to achieve. 

Illustration Project Choice(stickers)

Final Design of the Stickers
Printed Result
Process of Making the Stickers

The title of my Illustrator Project is Birdies. I chose to design some stickers for this Illustrator Project. I’ve always thought that birds are some funny creatures because they tend to do funny things and sometimes they just look stupid. So then I chose a pigeon, a goose, and a blue-footed booby and drew them with Illustrator. When I finished the pigeon, I thought that a normal pigeon was too boring, then I added some human feet to the birds. There isn’t really a message that I am trying to convey with my Illustrator Project. But if someone asked me why I chose to design these weird birds, I would say that birds are just some funny animals for people to draw. 

I had a lot of fun during the making of my stickers because I finally understood how to use Illustrator. That is also why I put a lot of effort in my project because I value hardworking and good quality of products. It was also a great experience to design something that I’m interested with the new techniques I learned. I’m pretty satisfied with the final result(especially the goose ones) and I hope to learn more about Illustrator to produce more good quality of designs.

Animation

During this Narrative unit, we are challenged to animate a walk cycle and a group project film. These are the first digital animation we make, so I was really excited to see the results and see what I am capable of. That is also why I again valued hardworking and enjoyment while animating these projects.

For the walk cycle, I’d like to thank Mr. Cho because he was so willing to point out my flaws and teach me how to animate the walk cycle in the most efficient way(literally saved my time and my life). I’d also like to thank my teammates who made the set with me. Making the set was a little challenging not because it was difficult but the process was long and exhausting. I would like to thank them and myself for not giving up making the set to make it perfect!

For the group project, I’d like to appreciate my teammates(especially Victoria because she basically carried the whole team) because they all worked really hard. I have to say that I’m really happy with the final result of our short animated film, it will always remind me of how hard my teammates and I worked.

Mood Scene/Walk Cycle

This is my mood scene project. We were asked to create a mood scene with a walk cycle using our original characters. I spent a lot of class time and extra time on this project because everything was very new to me.

I intentionally put cute sound effects and music in the background to convey that Harold might look weird and unapproachable, but he is definitely a cutie and a nice little monster.

I made this set with my 2 teammates for the walk cycle. Our theme is Dessert Land because we all love desserts.

I created this character, Harold, for my walk cycle. I wanted to create a character that looks awkward and quirky, yet cute. I hope it worked!

This is the process of making my walk cycle. Even though the process could say to be painful because it was my first time experiencing digital animating, but I did enjoy making it. I learned a lot from this project and I hope I will improve more next time.

Narrative Animation

Tomomochi. A story about two rice grains…

This is a small piece of the process of animating the group animation. I enjoyed animating it a lot because I got to draw the great story my team came up with.