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   During this unit I was told to create a story, this story would be the center of most of my project throughout all of my classes for the time being. First, we created the story in English with the help of peer editors and Mr. Greco. Then we created original music to go along with the different pieces of our stories in Digital Media. In design, we were then given the challenge of creating a unique character who resembles one of our characters from our story. Lastly, we created this website in Digital media to showcase all of our creations and show our coding and website creating skills.

This is a screen-shot of a portion of my code that was used to create and organize everything on this website.

This is a screenshot of my code.

This is a screen-shot of my pro tools session where I created my music.

This is a screenshot of my pro tools session.
Story

   When writing a story it is always important to start with a brainstorm and try to pull smaller ideas together to focus on one main idea. I started off with a few different story ideas and then narrowed it down to the one I liked best. Mr.Grecco wanted us to learn how to create a short story that wasn't that long but included all of the key components that a long story would be. He wanted us to write with showing rather than telling and use explicit details of everything that was happening rather than using quotes. My story ended up being based on the life of a teenage girl and her struggles through high school.

   Let's say there is this girl, her name will be Carly. Carly is a sweet and kind-hearted girl but there is another side to her that not many see. She hides her many layers from the outside world, not letting anyone see her vulnerability. To most she is just like any other average teenage girl, only focused on how they look and what they’be accomplished. On the inside she is a whole different person, she is confident yet insecure, proud but humble. She also had a best friend, we'll call him Chris, Chris is an exceptional kid. Top of his class and succeeding in almost every possible way, he has no enemies and is loved by all. He is everything that he is Carly wishes to be. The two met their freshman year of high school, the dorky pair hit it off immediately. Both exploring the unfamiliar territory together, naive and full of hope. As the weeks past their friendship continued to flourish, they filled each other lives with laughter and joy and were there to help each other even though the most stressful of times. Carly however started to head down a different path, one where everything was dark and lonely. Nothing helped and everyday it seemed to get worse. Then it came, the worst month of her life. The feelings of betrayal and hate were all she felt. She had only heard stories of situations like this never really imagining that she would experience it. Those mean girls the ones you read about in books or laugh at in movies, well it was her reality. The threats, rumors, hateful posts and continuous harassment engulfed her life. Chris, the only person she felt like she could turn to seemed distant. Carly was still so vulnerable and was getting close to her breaking point, when she finally exploded. She poured out all of those bottled up emotions into one long post. She asked herself, what next, what will fill this void in my heart. Chris was her antidote, he was the one she wanted but why would a guy like him ever be with a girl like her. She wasn't flawless, she was overweight, she didn't have friends, she was hated, she wasn't popular, she was irrelevant. And after all, no one likes a nobody.

Illustration

Introduce the design assignment.

Brainstorming sketch and characteristics
Brainstorming sketch and characteristics

   In my story, my character starts out kind of confident but after a series of events that confidence dies. She appears naive, self-conscious, quiet and frustrated. Mrs. Parkinson told us to find unique animal characteristics that were similar to those of our characters. I started to think of different quiet animals and which of their physical characteristics I could combine to make my character. To create this creature we were taught to use illustration for the first time, opposed to Photoshop which doesn't have nearly as many tools to bring our characters to life. We were taught how to move them one they were drawn so we could put them in different poses to show movement.

Example poses for my character
Example poses for my character

   In order to give my creature some human characteristics, I photographed a model to get some poses that I could use to position my character. I ended up using one of the images to create most of the body for my character but incorporated certain aspects of other animals.

.Character at school
Character at school

   My original Narrative that was written in English last semester is the basis of my design project. The story I composed, consisted of a young girl and her overall experience as she journeys her way through the start of high school. She undergoes many ups and downs that, after a while, begin to have a big impact on her life. It leads to self-consciousness, poignancy and a whirlwind of other emotions and haJacquelies to rely on her friends to keep her going. However, she is quite exceptional at hiding it, as are many kids going through hardships during this period of their life. In the end, she realizes that this drama filled world she is so caught up in is only but a small portion of her life and that there are so many things to look forward to.

  In design, we have been working on our narrative projects for a while now. We have created creatures that resembled the personality traits of the characters depicted in our stories. We did this by using various animal parts to show the physical and emotional qualities of those depicted in our flash fiction. Originally I started out with brainstorming different animals that stood out as soft, melancholy, affable, naive and delicate creatures. I started combining all sorts of animals until I ended up with a combination I liked. I chose a Gazelle because they tend to be pretty harmless creatures who are easily scared and timid. These characteristics resembled the same ones as my narratives’ main character, a high school girl that is caught up in a world of wild animals, also known as high school. She is debilitated and is easily damaged by her harsh surroundings. Her lack of confidence leaves her vulnerable to the predators surrounding her everyday life. Overall I would say that I was pretty satisfied with the outcome of my project, especially since it was my first time creating anything like it. If I was to change any of it I probably would have liked to add a little more detail and made the background a little less bland. I am happy that we did this project because I was able to get a sense of how much work can really go into creating just one character and surrounding, it has given me a whole new level of respect for how much time and effort animation puts into films.

Music

In Digital Media we produced an 8 bar clip of EDM music. We used a software called reason to create our beats and bring the music to life.

Audio book

   After we had written our stories we recorde ourselves reading the final version. After recording we added our original music to make it more liely and less boring. This music fit with our audio book to help tell the story and give it some audio affects.