As my main character, Sahar, evolves in my short story, she falls down numerous times prior to her persona flourishing and growing. Sahar is a naive, hardworking girl awaiting to see what life has to offer. She decides to move from her small hometown in Colorado to the city of stars, Los Angeles. As she builds a routine for herself, she becomes stained into a sense of convenience, rather trying new things and creating new experiences for herself. One evening, while on call with her sister back home, she finds herself glued to her usual comfort once again. Her sister furiously tells Sahar she must go out and explore the city for she has trapped herself within her own loneliness and consolation. She leaves her apartment and ventures out to West Hollywood to find a noisy bar where she meets her, soon to be, best friend, Kelsey. Kelsey is a known social media influencer who seems to have shared interests with Sahar. As the friendship quickly develops, Sahar adapts to the way Kelsey lives her life, leading to media fame which quickly downfalls to self insecurities and discomfort with her identity.
To create my illustration of Sahar, I used Adobe Illustrator to depict her character. With the body of a giraffe, she is seen as unique, the baby leopard face procuring undeniable beauty but maintaining a sad glance, a whale tail to show strength and durability, frog feet to establish being jumpy and unsure of what she wants to achieve, and lastly, butterfly wings to show she is shy and restrained. The background is a surgery room, which is where the climax of Sahar’s journey takes place. Her insecurities brought up from fame cause her to make unchangeable decisions such as plastic surgery. I used 2 point perspective to show this scene. It was difficult to address lighting and other factors such as shadows and dimension. I am happy with the project I created, but strive to keep learning and growing with the use of Illustrator. Moving forward, I will manage my time more wisely yet still incorporate detail. Overall, I enjoyed learning Illustrator and thought this was the perfect assignment to tie in everything I have learned thus far in Freestyle.
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