The focus for this unit, was a story I wrote for my English class. I then made music for it in my Digital Media class and then made an Illustration for it in my Design class. This website showcases everything I made, surrounding the story.

Fate

“That stuff is all crap. Destiny, fate. It’s all made up.” “No, it’s definitely real. Some things happen for a reason. There’s something up there looking out for all of us. It just works in mysterious ways.” It was lunch time and Ryan and David were having their usual debate over whatever new topic they disagreed on that day. One day it would be about baseball the next about the stock market. Some days they would argue about deep topics and the next about the illuminati and the inevitable end of the world. David always argued the positive side of things and Ryan the negative. Ryan did have a good reason though. When he was 14, his mom died in a hit- and -run car accident, and his dad had left them years earlier. Now athe is 42, he is and working as a sales person at a small telemarketing business. The only excitement he got during the day was the random topic he and David talked about. “I just think that random stuff just happens and you have to deal with it. Life isn’t fair” “Yeah but whatever random thing happens, it’s for a reason” The rest of the day went by like it always did. The boss yelled at Jeremy for never working. David flirted with Kelly even though everyone knew he had no chance. Dillon was humming a song he heard on the radio. And Ryan sat and did his work. Nothing new. The day ended and Ryan gathered his things to leave. He was glad to get out and be able to relax at home. As he walked outside he noticed some flashing lights and an annoying beeping sound. Ha, he laughed to himself. Some poor guy is getting his car towed. With a cry of surprise he remembered he needed to park in a different spot because some jackass from the coffee shop next door took his usual parking spot. “Stop!” He yelled as he ran over to the tow truck. The man gave his usual speech he gives to the upset car owners. “You can come pick your car up at the lot. Just call the number on the truck.” Now without a car, Ryan had to walk home. It wasn’t too bad. Ryan lived about a 5 minute drive away, but on the route he usually takes, there was construction so he had to take a detour. As he walked home, he liked looking around and watching people’s mishaps as they went go aboutthroughout their lives. That girl on her way home from getting her groceries just dropped all of her bags. That’s funny. The guy driving that nice car probably doesn’t deserve it. He’s probably a douche too. He was in the middle of making fun of a guy for walking funny when he heard a scream. He rushed a few feet ahead and looked into an alley. He stood in shock at a woman getting robbed at gunpoint. He saw them struggling and thought of all the conversations he had with David. About all the heroic actions of superheroes or police. Could he do something like that? He was just a normal guy. He realized he couldn’t just stand there and after a couple of seconds, he started running at them. He got 10 feet away when the gunman heard him and turned toward him. “Hey stop right there or I’ll shoot you in the face” Ryan listened to him and stopped. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He stared directly at the gun and wondered if this was it. Was this what his life was going to lead up to? Getting shot in alley on the way home from work? He knew he hadn’t lived a full life yet. He noticed out of the corner of his eye, the woman bend down a pick up a glass beer bottle that was laying on the ground. She had taken the opportunity because the man’s focus was now on Ryan. She smashed it on the guy’s head and he crumpled to the floor. The gun flew out of his hand and slid all the way to Ryan’s feet. The man started stirring, so Ryan quickly picked up the gun and pointed it at the man. The mugger stood up and started lunging at the woman. “Shoot him! Shoot him!” The woman yelled in fear as she saw the man pull out a knife. Ryan stood there in fear, unable to pull the trigger, unable to take another person’s life. He watched helpless as the man stabbed her over and over again. Ryan still had the gun pointed at him but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t hit the man if he tried. The man finished what he was doing and ran off, dropping the bloody knife as he went. Ryan fell to his knees and looked at the body of the now lifeless woman. She died because of him. She died because he couldn’t pull the trigger. He had basically killed her. He realized that he still had the gun in his hands. He turned the barrel so it faced him. The bullet in there could have saved an innocent woman’s life. It would have taken the life of the man but he would have saved the woman. Maybe the bullet still should take a life. He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. Ryan raised the gun to his own head. His finger tightened on the trigger. Ryan remembered what David always said. All things have a reason for happening. Then why did this happen?

Our assignment was to draw sketches of our potential backgrounds and clothes for our characters. Two initial ideas I had for my background were a bed and a refrigerator. I knew my character was going to be small and I wanted him to be hiding somewhere in a house. For the clothes, my character worked in a cubicle, so I thought that a simple dress shirt and pants would work well.

To make our character, we took images either that we took or we found on the internet to trace. Mine was a lizard, since that was what I chose to be my main character feature. We put our character into different poses and picked one to be used in our final illustration.

Ryan is a really cynical guy but for a good reason. He works for at a dead end job at small telemarketing business and he doesn’t have any friends. With his mom dying when he was young and his dad walking out on them, he’s been alone for most of his life. He likes to argue the negative sides of things and laugh at other people's misfortune. Ryans never believed in fate but he’s about to find out that there may be such a thing. After of series of unfortunate events, Ryan has to walk home from work and go a different way than he usually goes. What he sees in an alleyway could change his life forever. Or end it. Our assignment was to create a creature using parts of animals that share the same characteristics with our main character. For my character, I chose an aardvark and a lizard. They both were animals that you find by themselves and they seem alone. The lizard I specifically chose because it was small and likes to hide, which is the first idea I had. I thought that a small, hiding creature could represent the parasite of loneliness that a person feels. To make the creature, I first found an image of an aardvark and an image of a lizard and then used them to trace my character. We had to put clothes on our character, so I chose to put some boring work clothes that someone working at dead end, telemarketing job would wear. The background shows a door opening up to an alleyway. The door is coming from the inside of Ryan’s house and leads in to the alleyway. While in my story, the house and alleyway aren’t next to each other, I used it to show that whatever happened in the alley to Ryan, it’s going to stick with him forever. Whenever he walks out his door.

For this project, we were tasked with making our own music. We had to make a Story Theme, a Character Theme, and a Climax song.

The Audiobook is where everything we did this unit comes together. The story we made from English and the music we made in Digital Media gets put together. I present to you,

Fate