Narrative 1

“How well can you visually tell a structured story?”

Beginning with an exploration of prose fiction, we practiced communicating character and story arc through descriptive storytelling, storyboards, and animations. During the months of October through January, we wrote flash fiction (ie. super short story) and based all of our projects on it.

It was nice to get back into narrative writing, as I hadn’t written stories since my fanfiction days in middle school (yikes). It was reassuring to know that I still had a bit of creative writing within, and it’s amazing that I was able to actually portray my narrative visually through animation. My stories never left the confines of pen and paper prior to this unit. Seeing my story escape the Google docs and make its way to the big screen of the midyear exhibition was surreal, to say the least.

Flash Fiction

My story is about a pop star who struggles with balancing fame and family. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Eminem (as demonstrated by my spoken word in the Conceptual unit). I was heavily inspired by his story and more specifically, his song “When I’m Gone”, in which he raps about his regrets of leaving his daughter in the pursuit of fame and in turn, more money to alleviate his family out of poverty. It’s such a sad song.

In addition to this, I was quite fascinated with celebrity culture and the ruthlessness of the music industry. The “Poppy” project and the film “Perfect Blue” by Satoshi Kon is what initially sparked this interest. It’s honestly disheartening how the industry can sometimes break down a person and extinguish the passion that got them there in the first place. It makes you wonder, is being puppeteered by your agency really worth “living the dream?”

Now, without further ado, here is the product of all of those inspirations:

“Bright Lights”

     Prima Dawnah stood before the stagedoor. Her hair and makeup team were polishing her look. The makeup artist scanned her face. Concealer for the eye bags? Fake lashes? Cutting-edge eyeliner? Wine lips? Yes, it was all there. Simultaneously, her hair stylist made sure her hair was pin straight. Her natural curls were often difficult to maintain, but after 2 years of the same song and dance, they got the process down to a tee.

Her body was trapped in knee-high boots and fishnet tights. The fur jacket she wore was almost as soft as the small, stuffed bunny she held. She stroked it in a compulsive fashion with her sanguine acrylic nails.

Before she knew it, a man with a headset opened that door, blinding light flooding through. As she got pushed into the technicolor, screams of adoration filled her ears. Her body reverberated from the intensity of the beats. Suddenly, she stopped, her back facing the crowd. Beat. Turn. The audience roared. A photographer zoomed in on her face and-

Flash.

Security dropped her off at her hotel room. She soaked up the pleasant silence. Prima Dawnah shed her skin with a long shower, its water washing off her makeup mask.

When she checked her phone, she found three missed calls and a voicemail from her daughter, Solis. A grin escaped from her mouth. Unfortunately, she couldn’t call back because of the massive time difference, so she simply listened. Solis talked about her day: what she had for breakfast, what she learned at school today, etc. Even though it was just a voicemail, she talked as if it was a conversation. Dawn sheepishly sank into her mattress as she listened to the twinkle of her voice. The warmth of Solis’s voice lulled Dawn into a tranquil state, her mind absorbing Solis’s words like a flower does to sunlight.

An abrupt call from her manager shattered the comforting quiet. Reluctantly, she took the call and woke up from her peaceful state. She shivered as she listened to her manager’s barking. Instead of hanging up, she endured the demands of fame, keeping in mind Solis’s future and the once fragile state of her family.

Flash.

On a walk, Dawn and a friend encountered a little girl crying on the floor. The fresh blood of scraped knees was exposed. A look of horror swept across Dawn’s face. She crouched down to this girl’s level, fished out the stuffed bunny from her backpack, and gave it to her. The sun shined brighter, filling her with the warmth of encouragement.

However, the girl was pulled away from Dawn’s arms. She looked up and glared at a middle-aged woman with a fire in her eyes. The woman quickly walked away, girl in tow. Dawn looked down at the bunny she dropped and placed it in her hoodie pocket. As she left, she pet it with her thumb. Dawn had unconsciously hugged her.

Flash.

Dawn threw the tabloid against the wall. She hastily paced around her hotel room. On one hand, she was trying to call her spouse, but it went straight to voicemail. On the other hand, she was abusing the bunny, rubbing it until it lost hair. The clock read “3-AM”. A picture of Dawn embracing the bruised girl was plastered on the front cover. The words “AFFAIR” and “SECRET LOVE CHILD” practically screamed at the reader. Next to it, there was a picture of Solis and Dawn’s spouse, their sad eyes piercing her soul.

Flash.

Dawn was thrusted into Prima Dawnah. She managed to cough out lyrics as she desperately danced to the distortion. The audience screeched words of love towards Prima Dawnah, but they merely shouted into a void.

Flash.

She looked at her wedding ring and hopelessly picked at the bunny’s cotton. It was thinning just as much as her.

Flash.

She laid in a hospital bed. Despite the doctor’s efforts, they could not save Prima Dawnah.

Flash.

Dawn stands before a door. She dons a knitted sweater that’s almost as soft as the stuffed bunny she’s holding. She strokes it gently, careful not to undo its many stitches.

She opens the door, pleasant light streaming through the doorway. As she steps into the warmth, the laughter graces her ears and she shakes from the intensity of her heartbeats. Suddenly, she stops, tearing up at the sight in front of her. Beat. Solis runs into her arms and digs her face into her trembling chest. Dawn envelops her in a hug, but this time, no one pulls her away.

Design Projects

Our main Design project for this unit was to create a hybrid animal based on the traits of the main character of our flash fiction. This is the product of that, along with my artist statement.

Narrative character – Design project

“My story is about a pop idol’s challenge in balancing fame and family. The main character originally gets into the music industry to make a living and sustain her family, but she eventually realizes that she can no longer endure in this demanding business. Nasty tabloids in addition to the growing rift between her and her daughter pushes her to the brink.

I started this project by brainstorming a list of character traits and animals that could go with these traits. I picked a peacock and an eagle to represent confidence because of the confident aura it exudes. I chose a turtle to represent reserve and quietness, because unlike the character’s loud pop star persona, her real self is actually quite shy. I used a penguin to represent the trait of caring, because like penguins, she dotes on her daughter and loves her deeply. Lastly, I chose a salmon to symbolize determination due to the salmon’s determination to swim upstream. Similarly, the main character in the beginning was willing to swim through the harsh demands of the music industry for the sake of her family’s well-being. In terms of the background, I chose an aquarium because both fish and entertainers are trapped in a “tank” for our own personal enjoyment. An upward perspective was used to mimic society’s tendency to put celebrities on a pedestal and “look up” to them. Fortunately, creating the character design was fairly easy because I already had a specific image in mind. The only issue I had was figuring out linear perspective with a non-eye level view because I had rarely worked with it prior to this project. Despite this small hiccup, I am overall proud of my efficiency and the product I created.”

Animation

Animated Narrative

Lastly, we were required to make a video production of our flash fiction. Because I’m in animation, I, naturally, had to animate it. And oh boy, was that a pain. But hey, at least it ended up looking pretty neat.

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode

This video marks my first time creating a long animation using Adobe Animate. We did a few exercises using Animate prior to this project, but this was our first time actually using it for a big project. While I ran into many issues using Animate at the time of creating this animation, including the occasional crash, I have come to appreciate the Animate interface. The fact that it’s vector based makes animating so much more efficient! (*cough cough*, unlike animating in Photoshop…)

To create the backgrounds and stills, I used Photoshop and it’s plethora of brushes. The one advantage Photoshop has over Animate is Photoshop’s massive brush library. I learned that I couldn’t really create beautiful images in Animate because of its limited brush library. I was basically stuck with its plain, blunt brush. But with Photoshop, you could essentially draw a realistic image if you wanted to. In terms of illustration, the possibilities are endless!

Looking back, if I had to change one thing about this project, it would be cleaner lines and smoother animation. Some of the drawings could be more polished, and the animation physics could be, well, a lot more accurate. But alas, I was but a mere child. Now that I have 1 year of animation experience under my belt, my future animations can only get better.

Character Puppet

We basically had to create a physical stop motion puppet for this assignment, as well as a character bio to supplement it. Me being a crafty queen, I loved making the clothes for the puppet and painting its little face. But when it came to rendering the puppet as close as possible to our digital drawing of the character and actually keeping the puppet together, I struggled immensely. Don’t get me wrong, I love the way the puppet turned out; she’s a real darling! However, if you look at the puppet and then you look at the illustration, they look like two different people. Sure, they looked like sisters, but not like twins.

For the puppet, I used a plethora of materials, from the wire for the skeleton, to gauze for the flesh, to yarn for the hair. I actually sculpted the head and boots from clay, and while the head worked perfectly fine, the boots were a mistake. Let’s just say that dried clay boots do not hold up well while animating a walk cycle…

Mood Scene

Remember that stop motion puppet I mentioned in literally the section before this? Yeah, in addition to creating a walk cycle in Animate, we had to animate that puppet walking using the frame-by-frame camera techniques from the Conceptual unit. We had to create a set for the characters to walk in, and on top of all that, we needed to convey some sort of mood with our lighting choices. Creating the assets were fun, but composing everything was a bit difficult.

You’re probably thinking, “How did you get that digital character to walk on a real set?” Well, curious reader, we did it with the magic of After Effects.

In After Effects, we composed the walk cycles on top of the background. It was easy to overlay the digital walk cycle since it was already a PNG, but because the stop motion puppet was in front of a solid blue background, I had to key the background out. For the most part, it was simply to get rid of most of the blue background all thanks to the wonderful features of the almighty After Effects, but because the shadows often caused variance in the blue, I had to key some of the background out myself. Now that was painful.