Introduction

During the Narrative Unit, I was given the opportunity to express our creativity through telling a story and being able to deliver the story through different platforms. To start off, I wrote short stories in English and developed them throughout a few weeks. After writing the story, I had projects in both Design and in Digital Media which reflected these stories. In Design, I created a creature that represents the main character in my story. In Digital Media, we had several different projects but the one that connected to our narrative the most was creating an audio recording with an album art cover to go along with it. Overall, I learned a lot during the Narrative Unit and I was able to improve in a variety of different skills throughout the whole unit. I created a lot of work that I am proud of and happy to present on this website.

Short Story

In English, I wrote my own narrative short story based around the relationship of two sisters. In the story, one sister is sick from an illness, while the other sister struggles to support her sister and follow her own dreams at the same time. There is emotional tension throughout the story until the climax, but is eventually resolved in the end.

The Pulling Distance 

It’s a plain, dull Tuesday morning. Through the reflection in the foggy mirror, I fix my un-brushed, dark brown hair into another messy half-bun with a few yarn-like strands hanging past my sprinkled freckles. I shuffle down the stairs of my small townhouse apartment with my keys jingling against my sweatpants, wave bye to my sister, and speed out the door. As I hop on the ragged, jet black motorcycle I bought from a flea market, I calculate the time it would take me to get to school. Class starts in 5 minutes and it’s a 9 minute drive but if I speed, I can make it in 4 minutes and have a whole extra minute to walk to my class across the campus. 

“Jazmine! You forgot the receipt for the medication! Don’t forget to go there after school before work,” my mom yells from the steps of the porch. 

“I have the receipt on my phone mom. Everything’s online these days,” I reply with the same tone. “Plus, when have I ever forgotten to go to the pharmacy? Sometimes it feels like I do all the work around here,” I add, this time under my breath. 

My birth name is Jazmine, but I always go by Jaz. Mom calls me Jazmine whenever she wants to get my attention in the most annoying way possible. 

School days are pretty much the same every single day. They consist of me being a minute or two late to at least one class a day, going to work at the local coffee shop after school, and picking up medication for my sister before heading home at around 7 pm. Senior year feels dull, and I have a solid group of three friends, although I don’t hang out with them as much anymore. Most of my time goes into spending time with my sister and doing things for her that she isn’t really able to do anymore. On top of that, college applications are a burden. They’re just another useless stressor in my life, especially since I’m not sure if I even want to go to college anymore.

My little sister’s name is Abby, but I like to call her Abs. She’s eleven now. And she was diagnosed at seven. The problem is, the doctors don’t know exactly what she is diagnosed with. She gets symptoms that are similar to a tumor or some sort of blood disease, yet she doesn’t have a tumor growing inside of her. She’s what they call their “mystery case”, which is a lot more scary than it is cool. But she’s pretty much been either in hooked up to life support or lying in her bed at home for the past four years. Hospitals have become a regular thing for us. I’ve never missed a single appointment, although sometimes it feels like Abs doesn’t even want me there. Too many times I’ve sat in the waiting rooms painted in beige and hopelessness, staring at the blinding, flickering fluorescent light. When the doctors deliver the news, it’s always the same: first the good, then the bad. Something like: Your sister woke up, but she can’t move out of the bed for at least three weeks. Of course, I would be happy she made it out alive, as anyone would be, but it’s not the same. It’s more like she’s half-alive. Every hospital visit kills a little bit of her soul. The real her. I’ve started noticing it does the same for me too.

As I leave school, my phone rings. Miranda, my best friend, is calling. I think to myself: Jaz, don’t even bother picking up. You know she’ll just ask you to hang out or go get coffee and you know you don’t have time. Again. It’s pretty much like this all the time. I haven’t really been able to even talk to Miranda for longer than our 30 minute lunch periods at school, most of which I spend making up tests anyways. I let the call ring out and text her a quick “sry gtg!” as I hop on my motorcycle and speed to work. The five hours at the coffee house go by slower than my treacherous math class. Of course, before heading home, I stop my the pharmacy to pick up Abs’s medication. 

It’s gotten cold outside and the sun gone down, and of course, I forgot a jacket. I check the mail before going inside my house. It’s empty, as usual.

“Abs! I’m home!,” I yell as I’m submerged by the warmth of our small apartment. 

“Jaz!,” her frail but excited voice yells back. 

I strut to her room and find her laying in bed, reading the book I bought her last week. 

“How’s the book? You like it?,” I say as I place the new bottle of medication in the drawer of her nightstand. 

“It’s awesome! But you don’t have to keep buying me things like this, you know,” she replies, looking at me straight in the eye. Sometimes she gets so serious out of nowhere.

“I know Abs.” I definitely won’t stop buying her books though; they barely cost anything and they distract her from her illness.

Abs and I have always been close. I tell her everything going on in my life, even though there isn’t much because my life is basically based around her. I sit on her bed next to her and right before I’m about to start telling her about my day, she cuts me off. 

“Jaz, I have something for you,” she tells me and hold out a letter. It reads “University of Oxford” on the front of the letter. 

“Oh my god. I completely forgot,” I whisper to myself as I quickly take the letter from her hand and carelessly stuff it in the pocket of my sweatpants. Today is the day when Oxford sends out their early decisions. There’s really no point in me even looking at it anymore, even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it in the first place. It doesn’t really matter how badly I want to go there. My dreams have been replaced by Abs and her illness, which comes first above anything. 

“I know what that is, you know,” she says.

“Yeah, um, it’s whatever. No big deal, I don’t really even wanna go there anymore,” I lie. 

“Jaz, I’m not stupid. You’ve talked about Oxford since you were like seven years old. This is a really big deal,” Abs says while putting down her book. “In fact, I already opened the letter. Only because I knew you wouldn’t do it yourself. I know you’re all wrapped around with my illness and you prioritize it over anything, but don’t you think I see how much it’s taking away from you doing what you actually want to do? Don’t get me wrong, I love and appreciate all your help even if I don’t always show it, but I don’t want you to do it anymore. You got in Jaz. You got into Oxford and you have to go.”

My face is frozen and fragile, like a porcelain doll. Speechless. Stunned. 

“I.. I got in?,” I manage to stutter through the cracks in my voice. I feel my eyes starting to water as well. 

“Yeah Jaz, you did. And you deserve this more than anything. I know it’s in England, a far away from me and mom, but we’ll manage. My disease isn’t going away anytime soon, so it’s not like you’ll miss it,” Abs replies with a little giggle at the end. I hate it when she tries to make jokes in a serious moment, although I admit it makes me feel a little better. 

Still incapable of producing sentences longer than a couple short words, I move closer to Abs and give her a long hug. “I love you, you know,” I whisper while wiping away my tears. 

I wake up to an autumn breeze and the smell of crisp leaves and dewy grass. The sunlight dances into the room from the dorm room window. Before walking to my 9 am class, I look up at the wall where I hung up each letter Abs has sent me. It’s been two years, and I’m now starting my third year at Oxford as a design major. This place has exceeded all my expectations, but not a day goes by where I don’t think of my sister. We do also text and call, of course, but the letters have a more special meaning. She sends me a letter each time after a doctor’s appointment or a checkup, and I send her letters back whenever something really important happened in school. It’s become a routine. Her and mom are doing pretty good, and I facetime Abs every Thursday night to update her on everything that I haven’t mentioned in the letters. People always say distance pulls people apart, but I still feel as close with Abs as I did before, if not even more. The distance helped me appreciate everything while allowing me to pursue what I’m passionate about, and I can’t thank Abs enough for giving me that.

Below is a screen shot of my Pro Tools interface, which I used to create my audio recording. The final recording with the album art that I created on Illustrator is above.

Overall, writing the story and making it into a recording allowed me to improve my story-telling abilities and how to express that skill creatively. Although it took many revisions to the story and the audio recording, I’m happy with my final story recording and with the outcome of my album art cover.

Ilustrations

Geometric Light Cover

In Digital Media, our first project for the Narrative Unit was to create geometric light covers. For this, we had to go on Illustrator and design our own designs onto the star-like pieces of the light shade. After designing them, Mr.Flo would laser print them onto plastic pieces that we would then put together to create the final product. Here are photos of my initial design, before it was laser cut onto plastic:

The final product of my geometric light cover is below:

Artist Statement:

With my Geometric Light Cover, I was inspired by the weather and the transition from winter to spring. I chose to go with more subdued and winter colors, which to me is different shades of blue. Blue reminds me of winter and the gloomy yet refreshing weather. As for the patterns that we were told to create on Illustrator for each piece of the light cover, I chose to create two different flowers. When I think of spring, the first thing that comes to my mind is the blooming flowers. Flowers typically represent rebirth and joy, which I think juxtaposes well with the blue colors of the plastic on the light cover. I think when the light shines through it, it’ll represent the transition of the two seasons well. For me, I’ve always loved the few weeks where the weather slowly gets warmer and the sun starts to come out more. I just really like the in-between of winter and spring, it’s a really calm period of time for me despite everything going in school. I will choose to have a warm, yellow light shining through my light cover to represent the sun and to also create a nice contrast of the blue colors and the warm light. Through the process of creating my light cover, I learned a lot of valuable skills from Illustrator. This was one of the first Illustrator projects that I had to partially finish at home due to running out of time in class, so I also learned about proper time management through that. It was slightly difficult coming up with an idea and a theme for my light covers at first, since I wasn’t really sure of what to do. I started drawing random things in my notebook to think of ideas and I found myself drawing a bunch of different flowers, and that’s how I decided to design two different types of flowers for my light cover. I also had to figure out how to put the pieces of the light cover together, which I admit was a little tricky at first, but I was able to figure it out in the end!

Illustrator Project Choice: Stickers

After the Geometric Light Shade project, we were given a lot of freedom to create almost anything we wanted to on Illustrator. There were many options to choose from, including creating patches, T-shirts, phone cases, stickers, etc. We were also pretty much opened up to creating anything we wanted to based off of whatever inspired us. I decided to create stickers that I can give to my friends or use myself to put on different things.

This is a screenshot of my Illustrator interface, where I created my stickers.
This is the final product of my stickers.

Artist Statement:

For the Illustrator project, we were given a variety of options to choose from. Personally, I chose to create stickers. I saw the most artistic freedom with creating stickers, while also creating something physical that I can use for different purposes. I created a bunch of different stickers based on the things that I like. I love drawing, and two of my favorite things to draw are eyes and hands. So, I created stickers of hands and an eye sticker as well. I also created an elephant sticker, a sun, a flower, and a sticker for my little sister. I like how I had a lot of freedom with this project to illustrate anything I wanted to, while also learning a lot more about what I am able to do with Adobe Illustrator. There isn’t really a specific message that I am trying to spread through this project since there are so many different stickers, but I wanted to express my artistic freedom with this project and see what I am capable of creating on Illustrator. 

I learned a lot through this project. When we were initially introduced to this project, I was scared because I didn’t know if I would be capable of making anything good on illustrator, as I was still unsure of my skills on Illustrator. I was also struggling deciding on which project option to create, but I’m glad I decided to go with the stickers. With the Illustrator practice that I had already gotten from my Design class, I was able to get used to Illustrator pretty quickly and be able to create what I wanted to. I actually found myself working on this outside of class because I enjoyed it so much. I got a lot more confident in my Illustrator skills after finishing this project and I was able to learn a lot more about what Illustrator offers.

Design

In Design class, our major focus for the narrative unit was creating our Narrative Creatures. We spent quite some time on these, perfecting the characters and the backgrounds to the best of our abilities. I started by creating my hybrid-animal creature, and then moved on to create the background. Below is the process I went through to get to my finalized product. The entire project was done using Adobe Illustrator.

Creature process:

This was one of the very first rought drafts of my creature.
First draft of my background illustration.
Almost finished product
Final product

Narrative Creature Artist Statement

In my short story, the main character is a senior in highschool named Jazmine (Jaz) who is about to leave for college. She lives in Florida and got accepted into her dream school in England, Oxford, but she is obliged to stay home and help her sister who is ill with an undiagnosed disease. The story describes Jaz’s and her sister’s close relationship, but also shows how Jaz is resisting going to college because she is so busy helping her sister. At the end of the story, Jaz’s sister finds her acceptance letter to Oxford and compels her into going. The scene I decided to illustrate is the scene in the airport when Jaz is about to take off and leave her family. This was an important  turning point in the story and it depicts a lot of the emotions that the story was building up to. In the illustration, my creature, depicted as Jaz, is shown walking towards the terminal to begin her new life away from home. 

I created my illustration using Adobe Illustrator. I chose to build my hybrid creature using five different animals: chameleon, leopard, eagle, deer, and dragonfly. The body of the creature is a chameleon. Chameleons are known to camouflage to their surroundings and blend in, as if they are hiding. This matches well with Jaz’s personality and how she often hides her emotions in order to do what is best for her family. I incorporated leopard legs and eagle feet to represent the strength and perseverance that my character has. Despite her internal struggles, she never gave up when things got difficult. I used linear perspective to illustrate the airport that my creature is standing in to give it a real-life, 3D sense. I encountered some problems when first creating my creature because I wasn’t sure how to blend all the different animal body parts together smoothly and how to make the background look more interesting than a plain, dull airport. In the end, I think I addressed these problems to the best of my abilities and I am overall pleased with the outcome of my final illustration.