Welcome to my Narrative 2 website. Here you can find all the different projects that I have made for the Narrative 2 unit. The central question for the unit was, “how can you tell a dialogue-driven story?” In English class, we learned about different ways to tell a story using dialogue to create our own short stories. Once we had our short stories written, we created a book jacket for it as if it was a book. In WebAudio we created an animated book trailer and created this very website to display all of the above.

My short story, Haraldo, is based on a fictional character named Haraldo Magnusson who is the King of Norway. All characters and events are completely fictional. The story starts off when Harado is sitting on his throne and his squire comes to warn him of the return of his greatest enemy, Danny Devito. This is the first of a chain of events that leads to the Battle of Norway between King Haraldo's men and Danny Devito's new found supporters. As Danny Devito journeys back to his hometown in Norway, he encounters many obstacles, namely Haraldo's soldiers that are on the look out for him. After numerous failed attempts to sneak into the country, he finally prevails and reaches the capital city where he meets two highborn men loyal to his family. He is then brought to his long lost brother who provides him with soldiers and supporters. They then begin the march to take back the throne. The Battle of Norway has begun.

When writing this short story, I wanted to utilize abstract humor and have a sort of farcical theme but still have a interesting story. I initially wanted to write about two fictional religions that would battle over their beliefs, but ended up going with two rival kingdoms because I thought it would be more intense to have a really awesome battle scene. Through the process of writing this short story, I have become more comfortable writing my own stories. As someone who isn't extremely comfortable with writing, I thought that writing this short story was a pretty fun experience because there wasn't much restriction and I was allowed to be as creative as I could be. This project motivates me to continue writing on my own.

Haraldo by Kevin Huang

Haraldo is a story based around the life of a Norwegian King named Haraldo Magnusson. You journey into the past, back to when Haraldo is playing on the streets in his hometown Bodo, with his best friend, Danny Devito. Haraldo is a member of the Magnusson family that rules the Northern Kingdom in Norway while Danny is a member of the Devito family that rules the Southern Kingdom. Although their royal claim for power stirred up natural competition between the two boys, they valued each other's friendship and treated each other as brothers. However, when Haraldo's elder brother, the current King Regnor, is assassinated, all the evidence points towards Danny. Upon Danny's return from retrieving aid for Regnor, he is accused of the crime and flees from the scene. The assassination of the King by one of the royal families of Norway caused heavy unrest throughout the country leading to the first civil war in the nation's history. The war results in the ousting of the Devito family and the banishment of Danny from Norway. Many years later, Danny makes a return to his home country against the wishes of King Haraldo. Danny gains support from the people and leads an attack on the capital city, breaching its walls and invading the royal palace to confront Haraldo.

The color scheme for the book jacket is red, white and blue for the colors of the Norwegian flag. On the front cover, you see a close up of Haraldo's face and on the back cover, you see a close up of Danny's face. I added trees and stars on the back cover to represent the journey that Danny Devito had to go through to reach Bodo, from hiding in the woods to traveling in the dark of the night.

For my surrealism piece, I thought it would be a cool idea to make an image where a knife is stabbed into a solid object. I took a photo of a knife stuck into the side of a tree and blended it into the rock. The image is of a knife that is stabbed into a rock and the rock is shattered. I thought this was a cool idea because people don’t usually stab objects like rocks because they can’t really be broken in that way. In the image, the rock is shattered and the knife is in perfect condition when you would normally expect the opposite situation where the knife is shattered and the rock is intact. The rock and its shattered pieces give a nice texture to the image while the knife gives depth and makes it look more three dimensional.

For this piece, I used Photoshop to do HDR photography. By fusing 5 different photos of a tree, I got a uniquely textured image. I then used the liquify tool to mix it up and give it an unfamiliar look. Then, by changing the saturation of the image, it added a nice blue and green color to the image making it more lively. I used the color replacement tool on the knife and the rocks to give it a black and white look. Finally, I meshed the the rock and the background together using the brush tool.

In WebAudio, we created an animated trailer for our short story. This assignment was probably one of the hardest for me to complete as I am not very comfortable with Adobe After Effects and am not very experienced with animation.

The characters and drawings that are used in the animation were created in Adobe Illustrator. Then imported into Adobe After Effects to be used in the creation of the scenes. The scenes were then animated and connected together while accompanied by the sound effects. Through the process of creating the trailer, I have learned a lot about Adobe After Effects and its capabilities even though I am still uncomfortable using the program.