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Gay: A Junior Design Student - Narrative Character by Sarah Martinez (2019)

In my story, “Gay,” a young man explores his sexuality, in the crazy experience in which we call high school. Only he decides to do so with the wrong person. Not only does the main character, Devon, struggle with finding his sense of self, but he has to deal with all of the social consequences of his recent actions and decision to take a dive. Some of the most important scenes happen at the high school in which the characters attend, so that is why I decided to place my narrative character here as well. My illustration depicts a school hallway with common objects like doors, bulletin boards, hooks, lockers, and everything else that would have been in a school hallway. My creature is a combination of an elephant, a rhino, a bat, and a monarch butterfly. I chose all of these animals because each represents a different personality trait that my character possesses. The elephant represents wisdom, the rhino represents independence, the bat represents mystery, and the monarch butterfly represents creativity. These are traits that could be found throughout my story in the descriptions of the main character.

In order to create this illustration, I had to brainstorm exactly how I wanted it to look. The first step was the setting. With most of the story taking place in high school, I decided for my illustration to take place in a high school as well. Next, I had to brainstorm my character. In order to curate my list of animals, I listed the personality traits and then thought of animals that were often associated with them. After the brainstorm, I used Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to put my thoughts into action. First, I created a template for my background, a combination of a school hallway and other small objects, in Adobe Photoshop.After my background was finished in Adobe Photoshop, I then import it into Adobe Illustrator where the picture was brought to life. I traced the majority of my background using the pen tool, and added more details like highlights and shadows using gradients and changing opacity. The color scheme was chosen to represent the mood of my story: confusion and love. I then flipped through the Pantone Color book to find colors that were associated with that mood. After choosing one main color, I chose four other colors that complimented the first color and the mood as well. Related website
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