This story was the most extensive multimedia project of the semester, but I am very happy with how it turned out. This blog post will detail all of the different components that went into this project, and it will detail my thought processes when I was creating the different mediums. To see more about how I feel about this project after the fact, see this blog post!
Written Media
Traditional storytelling, storytelling through a written medium, is the primary medium that I use in my everyday life. In particular, I am a short story fiction writer, so my process in this written aspect is very familiar to me.
To start off with, I needed an idea. Initially, I had the idea to use a character that is a personified version of the moon. I wanted to use this character for the project because, in a unit on disability in the media in one of my classes, I learned that people with albinism do not have any representations in media that aren’t bad characters or villains. I wanted to change that, so I made my character, Moon, be a woman with albinism.
From there, I wasn’t sure how I wanted the story to go. It was only after thinking about how I didn’t want the story to fall into cliches that I figured out the major narrative. I wanted the story to have romance, but not to end with a happy, romantic ending, so I tried to evoke myths like those of Echo and the red rose in Greek mythology. I also wanted to show that sometimes relationships don’t work out, but that problems in a relationship aren’t always one person’s fault or problem. Those two concepts created the main narrative.
I did not create an outline when writing; I knew what I wanted in my head, but I did not write that down. However, this decision did not inconvenience me because it allowed me the space to be creative. It is only because of that creativity that this myth of how snow was created was made. The decision to add snow in was a decision I made while I was writing.
Finally, I reread through the piece to clean up any issues, and I moved onto the other media.
Visual Media
The two visual media I created for this project were inspired by the “Beautifying World” prompt (VisualAssignments2853: 2 stars) and the “Two Mirror Image Spread” prompt (Visual Assignment Bank: 4 stars) that I created.
For the “Beautifying World” prompt, I took several different photos when I was outside. I wanted to take a few photos of the moon, but because it was not visible, I did not take those photos. However, very conveniently, it snowed when I was trying to take these night photos, so I walked through and knelt in the snow to get some interesting angles for my photos.
This was the first photo that I took. The photo on the left is my original photo, and the one on the right is my edited photo. I took this photo straight on with the tree centered. Then, when I was editing it, I changed the exposure to make the contrast of the colors a bit better, and I used Adobe Photoshop’s Smart Sharpen tool to manually adjust how detailed the photo looked. Finally, I adjusted the colors to look more yellow.
This was the second photo I took, and I once again used Photoshop to edit the second image. I angled the streetlight behind me when I was taking the photo to create that nice glow in the corner, and I knelt down slightly to get a more interesting angle for the shot. When editing the photo, I sharpened the image very slightly, and I adjusted the exposure. Finally, I changed the colors in the photo to look closer to blue and orange, which made the blues brighter and the yellows more orange.
This was the third photo I took, and the second image is the edited version. For this photo, I knelt below the bush in the fourth photo to look up into the bush at a lamp. This photo got sharpened the most, and I changed the exposure the most on this. I experimented with the colors quite a bit, but I ended up making everything look a lot less saturated, but I kept and increased the saturation of the blues in the snow.
This was the last photo I took, and the second image is the edited version. For this photo, I tried to step back and line up the bush and the tree behind it to create an interesting composition. When editing the photo, I, once again, edited the sharpness and the exposure. Finally, I changed the colors; I made the blues more blue, and I made the warm colors a bit less saturated.
For the “Two Mirror Image Spread,” I created the prompt based on the “Two Image Graphic Spread” prompt. The graphic spread gave me the idea for my image, but the prompt itself does not fit my vision, so I made a prompt that did fit my result. Because my narrative has two different characters that act as foils to each other, I wanted to visually show that mirrored relationship.
To act as reflections of each other, I made the two characters mirror each other across the central vertical line. I used Clip Studio Paint Ex to draw, and I used the default female base with the pre-set pose “Wish.” I changed the model to be a bit taller for Sun. From there, I simply painted overtop the base while making changes to the body. For Moon, I made her body shape a bit more top heavy and muscular than the base. For Sun, I made her more bottom heavy and stocky. The outfits used complimentary colors, but the redness for the skin tones were the same. Once I painted the bodies, I sampled the blue and orange from the colors to create the background using the shape tool.
Design Media
The two design media I created for this project were inspired by the “Barcode Transformation” prompt (DesignAssignments1317: 3.5 stars) and the “You’re Invited!” (DesignAssignments1048: 3 stars) prompt.
For the “Barcode Transformation” prompt, I wanted to make a snowflake into a barcode that would read “The tears of the Moon.” However, because of space limitations, the barcode only reads “Moon Tears.”
First, I created the design for the snowflake using Adobe Illustrator. I used the polygon tool and the line tool to create all of the different shapes. I didn’t have any inspiration behind the snowflake’s design, but I wanted to use a lot of straight lines and complicated, symmetrical polygons because those shapes make me think of snow. Then, I moved the design into Clip Studio Paint. From there, I could change the background color so that the barcode showed up better, and I masked the barcode font that I found on dafont.com onto the transparent PNG of my snowflake.
For the “You’re Invited!” prompt, I wanted to make the opposite of a wedding invitation: a breakup announcement. However, I wanted to trick the audience by making the design still look like a wedding invitation until the audience looked closer.
For this design, I started with the background color; I wanted the design to look elegant and sad, so I went with a dark blue gradient for the background. From there, I typed up the text using a cursive script, which is common for wedding invitations. The design still looked very plain, so I made light, unsaturated, red rectangles around the text to draw attention to it. From there, I drew some crocus flowers on a vine using the Wikipedia page image as a reference image, and I drew some snowflakes. Both are important to the tale and the relationship which is why I chose those specific items. I had the snowflakes and vines wrap around the rectangles in order to move the audience’s eye around the page.
Audio Media
The two audio media I created for this project were inspired by the “Tell A Story” prompt (AudioAssignments2371: 3 stars) and the “Sounds Effect” prompt (AudioAssignments1932: 2 stars).
For the “Tell A Story” prompt, I wanted to create a narration of my written story. I am a disabled person who is involved in disability studies, so accessibility is very important to me, and the easiest way to make an accessible narration is by using multiple mediums. More than that, however, I think that telling a story adds to the impact of it, and different audio cues can create tone in a piece. The narration of my story is meant to create a peaceful and melancholic tone in the piece.
First, I created the narration for this audio. I used the recording booth on campus to create a high quality recording, and I did at least two takes of each sentence to give myself options when editing. Then, I edited out the worst options, and added more sound effects.
I either created my sound effects or sourced them from freesound.org. I used “Piano Loops” to create a peaceful background noise, and when the relationship was in a rocky point, I changed the background noise to part of “Closing In”. Then, I made “Waves” play whenever the sea was mentioned, and I made my “Clock Ticking” sound play when a large amount of time passed. “Bird” and “Elven Voice” were played in relation to the text, but I had the sounds play from the right side, which I assigned to the sounds associated with Sun. “Laugh” and “Water Drop” got a similar treatment, but I had the sounds play from the left side, which I assigned to the sounds associated with Moon.
Finally, I adjusted how loud each sound was via trial and error at the end of editing this piece.
Sounds in order of appearance:
Piano loops 197 octave down short loop 120 bpm by josefpres — https://freesound.org/s/836911/ — License: Creative Commons 0
Wave_Mallorca_6_IBSP2.wav by IvoryBunker — https://freesound.org/s/234096/ — License: Attribution 4.0
Bird – Pajaro 2.ogg by Lunevix — https://freesound.org/s/500999/ — License: Creative Commons 0
Elven Voice Romantic Verse Two Seh-heh Dahnsehvlehn Lesperado (90BPM) G Major by elvenvoice — https://freesound.org/s/796889/ — License: Attribution 4.0
laugh_woman_4.wav by moxobna — https://freesound.org/s/72353/ — License: Creative Commons 0
Clock ticking by aceofspades22 — https://freesound.org/s/837149/ — License: Creative Commons 0
Riser_ClosingIn by Wavewire — https://freesound.org/s/833493/ — License: Attribution 4.0
00934 water drop one shot dry 2.wav by Robinhood76 — https://freesound.org/s/68915/ — License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
For the “Sound Effects” prompt, I wasn’t sure what I was going to create going into the prompt. I decided that the best sound effect for me to create was one to indicate that time was passing in the story. I associate time passing with the “tick-tock” of a grandfather clock, so I wanted to make that sound effect using just vocalization.
To create this sound, I sat in the recording booth just experimenting and trying to move my mouth in a bunch of different ways to create the same sound. After that, I listened through the sounds to find the effect that I thought sounded most like a clock. Many of the sounds were too wet or too obviously vocalized. Eventually, when I found a sound I liked, I cut out everything else, and sliced up each “tick” and “tock” to make the pacing a bit better. From there, I published it to freesound.org, and I used it in my narration.
Clock ticking by aceofspades22 — https://freesound.org/s/837149/ — License: Creative Commons 0
Video Media
The two video media I created for this project were inspired by the “Animatic Joy” prompt (VideoAssignments2823: 5 stars) and the “Arts and Crafts Tutorial” prompt (VideoAssignments1886: 3.5 stars).
For the “Animatic Joy” prompt, I immediately knew what I wanted to create. I wanted to draw the freezing of Moon’s tears as they turn into snow. This plot point is what I consider one of the central plot points, so I wanted to create something to highlight that importance.
I used the design image I created to start this animation off. I wanted to show the tear falling off her cheek before freezing and falling onto the mountain. I animated this in Clip Studio Paint Ex on 2s, so each frame was used twice. I started by just drawing the tear growing where her eye would be for about 3 unique frames, then I drew the tear falling down her cheek for a few frames. Once it fell off her cheek, I changed perspective to show just the tear falling down the screen. As it fell, I added more lines to show it crystalizing, and eventually, I switched the tear for a snowflake. Finally, I had the mountains rise up from the bottom, and I added a white splotch when the snowflake connected with the mountains.
After I drew everything, I added the frames to CSP’s timeline feature and exported it as a GIF. From there, I added the background music and tear drop effect.
Sounds in order of appearance:
Piano loops 197 octave down short loop 120 bpm by josefpres — https://freesound.org/s/836911/ — License: Creative Commons 0
00934 water drop one shot dry 2.wav by Robinhood76 — https://freesound.org/s/68915/ — License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
For the “Arts and Crafts Tutorial” prompt, I had the option of showing either Sun’s or Moon’s crafts that are portrayed in the narrative. However, since many of my other media were focused around Moon, I decided to show Sun’s craft.
For this video, I started by recording myself drawing the rose. I knew my apartment had Lego roses available, so I drew one of them using Ohuhu alcohol markers I already had. This was a tedious process, as I had to balance my phone over the table. I made one whole recording of myself drawing and moving the rose in. Then, I edited out some of the filler or unnecessary parts of my drawing process, such as the moments where I stopped to think. I also sped up my drawing speed to cut down on the time of my tutorial.
From there, I returned to the recording booth. I narrated my process as if I was Sun. Then, I edited down that audio and added it to my video.
While I am not entirely happy with all of these media, I am glad that I made them, and I think they work well to help tell my multimedia narrative.
What do you think about my editing? Would you do anything differently? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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