Noise: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Makeda Yezalaleul (2018)

My flash fiction story follows a girl as she is trying to make it back to her resort room at night. As she walks through the jungle-like retreat, she is met with an assortment of sounds. Some of which include cricket chirps, frog croaks, and footsteps. However, the lingering footstep sounds she initially dismisses begin to quickly approach her with force. They cause the girl to panic as she aggressively attempts to unlock the door to her grandparents room. It was not until the footsteps had reached her destination when she was able to realize it was her brother behind her the whole time.

My story’s main character was best described as curious, adventurous, fearful, and impatient. The animals I believed best embodied these traits included: cat, squirrel, owl, lemur, and rabbit. I would then attempt to make a creature consisting of individual traits from each of the animals I chose. It was not as difficult as I assumed it would be to create my hybrid creature in Adobe Illustrator, yet laying out my background was a different story. It was hard to first sketch my background because I was unsure about how to incorporate linear perspective in a resort scene. Luckily, my peers gave me helpful ideas which I implemented on my final piece of work. A problem I encountered while using Illustrator was filling objects in with color. This was difficult because my initial layout did not have completed objects with attached anchor points. I then re-traced all the objects I wanted to be a certain color and filled them with the Pantone colors I chose. I am happy I was able to directly transfer the image of what I had wanted my narrative story to look like onto an artboard. However, there are still minute details I wished I had added. I would have included more plants with better details like leaves or petals for instance. Also I would have somehow incorporated the footsteps from the story into my drawing.