Narrative 1

The narrative unit includes several projects – We write a narrative story with symbolism. We record those stories as audiobooks. We create illustrations to embody our characters. There are a few things unrelated to the story that we produce – experimental Music, and a group music recording project. For Design, we learn drawing background and put it with our narrative Drawing. That’s a LOT of different projects. We also do a lot of practice.

The Visual Narrative unit helped me figure out how to express detail and nuance in my stories, and think abut what message I wanted my art to send.

Aliment

Aliment

The morning was dry and far too warm. Typical for Vegas. Most people would stay in bed – like Rae would want to – but the day waits for no one, especially with her job. The air conditioning of her tiny apartment doesn’t start up this early in the morning. She slips on the same old socks she’d left on her dresser, hating the feeling of the cheap flooring under her feet. Rae’s pantry is devoid of anything remotely nutritious, so she grabs a rice cake and a spoonful of peanut butter, and tells herself she’ll just wait until the family meal at the restaurant, provided by another chef, serving free lunch to the rest of the staff. She grabs her bag, already packed the night before. Water bottle, her knife set, as she doesn’t like to share hers with the others, and her uniform.

Her walk to work is… odd, to say the least. The gambling city never smells good, and is crowded all hours of the day, even at 5:24 in the morning, where clubbers from last night are still awake and stumbling back to hotels or penthouses. Rae is neutral about how people act. It’s their choice, right? She spends more time at work than she does at home – or out in the city. But then again, it’s probably for the best. She likes the kitchen better than her apartment, though her occupation isn’t exactly what she wants it to be. Her knives clink in her bag, reminding her like windchimes to hurry up.

She gets to the restaurant at 5:45 in the morning, and is changed into uniform by 5:50. Rae has her routine down to the second, and is started on her prep work by 6:00, when the actual patisser, Jaqueline, should come in. Jaqueline is usually punctual. Usually. But not today, because by 6:30, Jaqueline is nowhere to be found, and the head chef, Steven, comes over to Rae’s station while she’s sharpening her knives. Steven informs Rae that Jaqueline won’t be here today. Or any of the following days, actually, because she’d quit to move across the country. Without any warning. During peak season. Rae freezes for a moment, staring at Steven. “Pardon? But what about her prep for today? I can’t handle it all!” Rae protests. Steven just waves it off, saying he’ll help for the time being.

So, Rae goes to find the recipe book, knowing they’re meant to be doing tarts for dessert today, but unsure of the intended flavor. Her brain is already rushing at a mile a minute, trying to figure out what she’ll need help with, and what Steven will need to fill in. As she goes in search of the recipe, she runs into the saucier, and forgets to apologize, their shoulders knocking. He gives Rae a dirty look while she’s on her way back to her station. Steven starts prep for a few different things, including pie dough, and a batch of their signature cookies. Meanwhile, [Name] is desperately trying to keep her cool over the apples missing from the pantry and the severe lack of vanilla beans where they’re meant to be. Of all the days for the kitchen to be abnormally disorganized!

Without meaning to, she snaps at Steven twice over the consistency of the dough, knocks shoulders with Tom in the narrow walk-in fridge, their head of operations, and actually shouts at the Sous Chef, Russ, for knocking over the bowl from the edge of the counter, which he’d been doing all week, even when Jaqueline told him not to. This ends in Steven asking ray to step out for a moment. She does, standing out back and wishing she hadn’t wasted time sharpening her knives during pre-service. She chides herself for not doing it last night.

Her break is anything but restful, standing out back of the restaurant and wishing she still smoked. She manages to finish her prep by skipping the family meal to make sure everything is prepared in time for service. Surprisingly, the service runs smoothly, but her stomach keeps growling. But her knives are sharp enough, just as she is. Russ doesn’t knock anything over on Rae’s station, and by the end of the night, she’s not even exhausted, how she usually is when Jaqueline is ordering her around. 

During cleanup, Rae is just ready to go home, knowing that she has the next day to look forward to, doing the same thing, just the way she wants to. Her uniform is clean and pressed, a warm walk to work, her knives in her bag.

Reflection

I think I’ve told my story quite well. The music tells the listener about the emotions of my character, and the SFX punctuates my motif and a turning point. The ambiance helps the listener understand how overwhelmed Rae is, how much noise in her life she just has to walk through like it doesn’t affect her.

I’m proud of the background noise I’ve chosen. I feel that I haven’t relied on cliches and tropes too much to build the feeling in each scene, the way the music and the ambiance come together to show how Rae is uncomfortable, how there are parts of her day where she’s simply powering through discomfort to get to the parts she likes, half lying about what doesn’t bother her.

Out of this experience, I can greatly appreciate how difficult finding and choosing the right sound is. I went through a lot of different options for the music but had trouble finding the right one, and trying to produce the right sound is difficult too. Finding the right SFX is also difficult, and recording our own isn’t much of an option here, making it even more difficult to find the exact sound desired.

The “exquisite corpse” assignment is a groupwork piece of art. Each person goes on their own to create a section of the creature. Mine is the far left, a take on the classic Ouroboros, a snake eating it’s own tail. the snake lunges and bites, drawing blood. The middle section is draw by TylerS, and the right side by RonanE.

This is the album art for my short story audiobook production. It centers a character who is a chef, so it seemed logical to create a cover representing the items she always has with her. Her knife set. She uses it at work. and at home, so it’s always in her bag. And of course, she has a little pizzaz, so the knife has a little sparkle. I also very much enjoyed making the texture of the cutting board.

This is the design for some glass art I’ve made. The plan was to laser-engrave it onto some tumblers. This is for my mother, who absolutely adores stars.

Using Illustrator for image creation is what I’m used to using it for, but challenging myself to use many features I hadn’t before for this project was difficult. Illustrator creates a far smoother workflow for drawing and image creation rather than Photoshop. In my experience, I prefer to draft my drawing with a pencil and paper, then create it digitally with Illustrator. Illustrator is definitely more effective when creating repetitive designs like the one I made. I created Laser-engraved glassware. My mom really loved stars, and so I chose to make these for her, as a gift. I really enjoy functional art, and so I chose glassware, because it’s art that can be used in everyday life, and that my family will enjoy.

 For this production, I created all the different patterns for this by hand. I drew the shapes and repeated them, turning them into pattern blocks to be used in the stars. It is important to me that each detail of a design is thought out, and I resized each pattern to sit each star. I also added a smattering of normal, non-patterned stars to fill empty space and make the pattern feel more complete. My overall thoughts on my project are that I achieved all my goals in creating this project.

Music Recording Project

For the first project, we formed groups and recorded covers of songs. Our Chosen song was Reckless Driving by Lizzy McAlpine & Ben Kessler. I recorded with MiloK and KristinI. We split up lines by person and did some singing together. The real challenge of this project is the logistics – getting everyone together, figuring out editing, and finding time to actually record.

Experimental Music Project

This was interesting to produce. It feels simple, but finding out what I liked the most about a sound and balancing each instrument.

THis is my background for my narrative creature. I used 1-point perspective to give this cold, cladestine kitchen the sense o being a real space.

Here is my narrative creature in all it’s glory. This project ties into our Narrative stories. This creature is a representation of my main character – each aspect of her personality is represented by one part of the animal, stolen and jumbled together from others. For the process, I had to choose personality traits, animals that matched them, and parts of those animals. The Maw of a honey badger represents her confidence. The tongue of a komodo dragon represents her strength, the animal with the strongest venom in the animal kingdom. Her sharpness is illustrated by the feathered crest of a Harpy eagle. She’s fast, represented by the sea otter’s body. Calculated, as she must be, communicated by the morpho butterfly’s wings – a scheming distraction. And the location? Well, my character is a chef! She must be in the kitchen, whipping up pastries with a commanding intensity. 

My biggest challenge in bringing this creature to life was fitting all the parts of the animal together, and finding the style I wanted to.

Creating Both of these projects was difficult, but quite revealing. It helped me learn how to be patient with the artistic process. These two projects are made to work together, and cooperate, so doing them separately to bring together was a challenge.