My short story is about a young adult, Martin, who begins to work at a ski lift and finds that his job would be much more taxing than he first imagined. As he continues his job on the lift, he becomes more confident in himself and his boss starts to notice. Martin and James, who’s Martin’s nemesis, are both try for the same management position. Martin ends up winning because of his bravery skiing down Andre’s Paradise, a deadly ski run. In this scene, I took a metaphorical approach to Martin's internal struggle when he is about to quit his job at the ski resort. The creature I created is staring down the path, not knowing whether to continue or quit. I also wanted the illustration to be quite dark, so I decided to have minimal light and make the forest very cloudy.
To create the illustration, I used Adobe Illustrator. For my creature, I chose animals that are independent and confident to create the hybrid animal. Much of the story is an internal monologue with Martin’s thoughts, so the animals must be somewhat independent. I wanted the creature to be immersed in nature and I felt that using massive Sequoia trees would make it seem like the creature is trapped, just like Martin. To make my illustration, I mostly used the pen tool in Illustrator. The pen tool is extremely versatile and can do just about anything I need it to do. I used a one point linear perspective to draw attention from my creature throughout the scene. Some difficulties I had were creating specific details on the hybrid creature like the spots or the wings. The only things that I would do differently would be to add more color to the creature itself, but keep the background like it is. Overall, I am very pleased with the illustration I was able to create and I feel like I was able to represent my story well.
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