In our Narrative Unit this year we were challenged to use our new knowledge of digital media to tell stories. The main tools I used this unit were Photoshop (for animation), After Effects, Protools, and Illustrator. In English, we had projects ranging from writing to creating presentations based on 1984 by George Orwell, which we read for class. In digital media, we recorded the short stories we wrote in English and edited them with sound effects to make an auditory narrative. In Digital Media we also Illustration designs for shirts and other design uses.
I especially value the Narrative Unit because I want to work in entertainment arts in the future, and I believe the more you do of something the better you get at it. This unit really made me work hard to tell better stories with different mediums, whether it be in the form of writing or animation. I saw this unit as practice. I often wasn’t satisfied with my results for a project, so I had to remind myself sometimes that it’s my first time creating projects like these.
Animation:
The purpose of making walk cycles was to practice for our Narrative Films,
Narrative videos weren’t posted to the Freestyle channel, couldn’t add them to the website.
Illustrations
We used Adobe Illustrator in Digital Media to create narrative projects. Here are my illustrator projects:
For my Geometric Light Cover, I decided to design human parts into it. In Illustrator, we had a basic template of the example light cover, we could edit it into the way we wanted. The original butterfly wings were turned into hands in my light cover. I chose to have my light cover to be cut into white plastic for a more simplistic and symbolic design. Instead of a message, I am trying to display symbols with my light cover. The theme I decided on for my light cover would be the masks of comedy and tragedy, some would refer to it as the “Sock and Buskin”, which I’ve also made the title of my piece. The masks are also known as symbols of the two muses, Thalia and Melpomene.
I valued the Geometric Light Cover project because it is very rewarding to not have to just create a design, but get a dimensional physical product from it. Often with design/art projects we don’t get as interesting of a result as this; I enjoyed being able to physically hold my project and spend time putting it together. I think students gain a different learning experience if they get hands on engagement with the subject.
For my shirt design in illustrator I tried to recreate a zombie movie poster. I just felt inspired by old vintage movie posters and I wanted to be able to have that on a shirt. I really enjoy games and shows with zombies. I’m very invested in new game releases and new movies that come out. I chose a specific color scheme that would be muted enough to give off a post apocalyptic vibe.
I wouldn’t say I’m especially satisfied with the end result, I struggled to learn how to use illustrator to convey what I wanted to be printed on my shirt. I had a challenging time making my design look how I wanted it to, I’m used to drawing designs in photoshop, not slowly creating them with vectors. This project was valuable because it really made me learn how to get better at vector art and understand the different tools in illustrator better.
Story
In English Honors we had two big assignments, writing an author study and our own short story. We produced a recording of our own voice reading the story and then added sound effects in protools. When writing my short story, all I knew is that I wanted it to be about interactions between a girl and the moon, so that is what my story is about. The story is fictional and is about how a girl removes the moon from the sky and sends earth’s gravity off-kilter, her goal is to put the moon back in the sky. This project was useful because I could further my narrative skills with sound design.
Author Study
For my author study, I wrote a story mimicking on H.P Lovecraft’s writing style, I read and studied his works for class and then wrote a biography about Lovecraft. Here is my short story:
It is November 9th, the agonizing pressure writhes into the inners of my ears and nauseates me so my throat retches until I puke, an indescribable force compresses my brain until it feels infinitesimal. I will unquestionably perish in no less than a few hours, for I know she is right behind that door. For practically all of my conventional life I have never had a slight interest in the occult or anything remotely religious, with what force inspired me to stray from my path I do not know. I assure you I am a logical man, a mathematics professor at Brown University, these are not the ramblings of a deranged mad person. I assure you that the horrifying scraping and the ghastly gaping groans rapping on my bedroom door are real!
I can still see her figure, disfigured and disgusting – could god ever forgive me for what I’ve done? Never could I have seen this outcome in my desperate envisionment, that I would commit acts this iniquitous upon my own wife. Even through her years of being ill with the Consumption, I loved her dearly. She always sang to me sweetly, comforting me through her pain. When she passed away life became insufferable, all my time was spent in our residence. I left my job to pursue the solace of the house, fixating myself on preserving her memory in each room. Every article of clothing and piece of furniture was kept the way it was when she passed away, the photographs of us together on the mantelpiece had to be kept dusted, all for the sake of her memory.
With no occupation to tend to I spend all my time reading, studying psychology, hoping to find a cure to my sadness. An old friend from university, J. Parker, heard of my grievances and sent a package to contact me, in his ambiguously written letter he sent he described of a occult-like discipleship he had become part of and how it could help me bring my wife back. It read like a hilarious joke! But it terrified me how I was bizarrely interested in what he told me, I longed to hear her melodious singing again. When the packing paper was peeled back it revealed the most unusually vile object, it was nightmarish and otherworldly, like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was a thick ancient seeming book, but what was horrifying about it was the cover, it was leather with horrendous engravings of gnarled bone-thin bodies tumultuously climbing over each other, each one with a sallow face with a more painful expression than the last. In the center was a naked man with a goat’s head, feathered wings sprouted from behind him. In between the long horns on his head was a sole regal crown and around them was a gold inscribed pentagon like an unholy halo. It was an image so savage but elegant, perversely detailed with the most abhorrent depictions but somehow managed to exhilaratingly beautiful. The second I opened the book I was taken ahold by presence, an indescribable motivation grasped my hand and flipped me through the flaky think papers of the book to a page titled Remanifesstation, it was as if the book knew exactly what I desired. The text was written in an old english font with the main words in English but the side notes in Latin. I read as if possessed, each word telling me more steps to bringing my wife back, I didn’t know if it would work but I needed her back. I threw everything in the living room aside to draw a copy of the large pentagram-like symbol with chalk on the floor.
I didn’t recognize the satanic symbols I wrote around the pentagram on the floor, nor did I understand the Latin the book was telling me to recite. Any hesitance I had to continue with the ritual was overcome by some abnormal demoniacal power that kept my body moving. I fearfully stuttered to say each word that was in the book, the words became twained in my jaw as I fought to keep my mouth shut but the enigmatic force kept moving me, forcing me to repeat the Luciferian incantation. I could hear the very palpitations of my heart in my feet, it was as if the ground was tremoring, coming alive and stirring awake after a centennial slumber. As I continued to recite, a cacodemonic sound emitted from the ground and the air smelled horribly metallic and like rot. The floorboards started to screech and move, as they separated the accursed rotting smell became unbearably strong. As if giving birth the wooden floor opened up from the middle of the room and the absolute culmination of my fears presented itself. Just seeing the silhouette of the creature in the crepuscular light caused a shrill scream to burst out of me, it was obscenely disgusting. A haunted susurrus of malicious whispers licked my ears. My knees instantly weakened as I saw more, the frightening details became more clear, it was monstrous but had parts resembling a human woman, legs and arms jutted out in unnatural places. The skin was the most disturbing part, grotesque porous holes squirming with maggoty worms covered every inch of the diabolical creature. Only a short portion of what I can assume was the cadaver-like creature’s back wasn’t consumed by holes, and it was a patch of skin that resembled a delicate face, my dear wife’s face, her soft, soft face. I looked into those brown eyes and I knew it was her. It started crawling towards me, the macabre limbs created ripping sounds as if the creature were carnally tearing its own muscles just to be able to move. As if all the human instinct within me was stimulated I screamed and ran out of the house, arms flailing in the air and onto the streets, not even glancing back once to see if it was following me. I ran to the nearest train station and got the earliest ride out, I escaped her once but she has most definitely found me again. I hear her nails scratching and multiple hands knocking rhythmically at the door, as I write in the notebook of this hotel I know she is waiting for me. The harrowing thoughts plague me more intensely than anything ever before, today, November 9th would’ve been our marriage anniversary. I cannot escape this time so I must write, i-if I disappear you will know why.
Short Story
“They say if the moon disappeared, the earth’s gravitational pull would go off kilter. The days would shorten to six hours and the tides would become higher than ever before.”
“Days will become blinks and the world will flood”
Leaves fall differently in Autumn, with a cadence of crisp crunches and crackled crinkles (instead of the summery calm clinking). But in all seasons, when the wind blows through the leaves it makes the same chirring chitter, and tonight the chitter was continuous and clamorous. To try to close this all out she clamped her window shut before kissing her stuffed animals and slipping into bed.
The moon aligned with her window differently in the fall, shining through the glass-like susurrus singing but also soft shushing. Only in the fall would the moonlight shine through her window and hit her face all night. Moonlight is not soft, at least not to the girl, it’s harshness came in the way that it wouldn’t let her sleep during the brightness of bigger moons. And today she especially wasn’t allowed to sleep. The best way to put it is: it was a night that was noisiest in the quietest way. During the day, her window was a source of entertainment as she lived on top of the highest hill overlooking the city. When she peeked outside she could observe all the happenings, the squabbling and scrambling to get to work, the way they weren’t indistinguishable from ants. She liked watching from her house on the hill. And just like how people pretend to squash skyscrapers, she often closed one eye and squared up her fingers to pretend to squish the ant-people she saw through the window. The girl liked how her blankets felt, and how they were heavy and pushed her deeper into the mattress. The way cotton touched her toes was warm and securing. Despite her comforting comforters and however her toes felt, the bright moon insistently irritated her. Even when her eyes were closed, she saw the light through the pinks of her eyelids. Closing the blinds would be a dangerous operation, it would require her to lug her body out of the security of the bed, and by this point she was absolutely glued into that mattress. She squinted at the sky intently as she freed one arm from her bed, she squared her fingers up to the moon like she was going to squish it, and with little more than a twist and a turn she plucked it out of the sky and tossed it under her pillow.
————————
The shrill shrieks of seagulls and soft static-like wave sounds woke the girl up, but there were rarely seagulls where she lived. She sniffed and the air smelled like salt. Rubbing the dust out of her blurry sleep stained eyes she peeped at her room only to suddenly gasp. She immediately backed up on her bed into the wall and held her mouth.
It was her room, up to her mattress it was filled with about two feet of water swirling with schools of small fish, each one glinting when it passed the sunlight peering through the window. Her previously unclear sleepy self was now buzzing with electric nerves. She timidly clutched a stuffed rabbit as she looked outside the window, she was yet again startled to see that there was idyllic blue water as far as she could see. It rose to the same level at the water in her room, the town she was used to observing was tucked deep under the lapping waves of the newly risen sea. The water was so clear that she could see the town, but there was no one there. The roads were empty, like all the ant like people she’d loved to squish had vanquished overnight. The clock on her nightstand said it was nine in the morning but the sun looked like it was in the late afternoon. There were so many fish though, ones she’d never seen before, small colorful coral fish stayed near the surface, giant schools of anchovies swam in incomprehensible masses, spry flying fish leapt out of the water and soared before plunging back in. Deeper in she noticed giant tuna with rigid backs being chased by even larger shark-like fish. It was fascinating, but also unsettling, with the absence of the usual townspeople the girl felt incredibly alone. She checked under her pillow, the moon was still there, still small and the same size as when she plucked it out of the sky. She may have learned about this in class, she remembered the moon orbits the earth while the earth orbits the sun. Her teacher told her the moon was the one that controlled the ocean, so she put the moon in her pocket. She figured she had to put the moon back where it belonged, for it didn’t belong to her. Gently but fearfully she placed her toe on the surface of the water, the sudden disturbance causing the fish to disperse. The mild coldness of the water made her shiver at first, but she emerged her legs more at touched the floor of her room. She felt as their smooth scaled bodies circled her legs as she waded through them, one leg at a time she brought herself to the also flooded living room. The fish seemed to follow her as she moved around, checking each room and seeing the same thing each time, water and fish. She made her way up the stairs, the water didn’t seem to reach the second floor. The light coming through the windows darkened, the sun was setting much faster than usual. The water dripped off her legs as she walked to the upstairs balcony, making plinking sounds as it hit the floor. The sky was dark, the girl took the moon out of her pocket and it was so luminescent she had to squint her eyes. She reached out as far as she could, but the moon wasn’t going back into the sky. She jumped, but the moon stayed with her. The girl climbed up onto the balcony railing and balanced herself, she extended her arm again and rose on the tips of her toes, and with a pop and a click the moon seemed to secure itself back into a divot in the sky. The girl fell back onto the balcony, hitting her body and head on the hard floor with a thump.
The girl woke up the next morning, but to the sounds of cars, dogs barking, and people talking. Like everything was back to normal. She went about her day, sitting in her window and crushing people like ants with her fingers. When the night came and again the moon shone especially bright, she got out of bed, and closed the blinds.