Pandora's Creativity
Assignment: In this assignment, we had to draw an illustration depicting a scene from one of our screenplays this year. We were told to draw using only symbols to represent the main ideas.
My character, Joe Bloggs, struggles in a world where to be at the top, one has to be more creative than everyone else. His world is one with a caste system, and Joe spends his life searching for the formula (or golden ticket) of how to be creative in order to propel him to the top. He meets Hazel, a member of the top caste, who gives him the formula of being original-but in using a formula, he realizes there is no originality. In this scene, Joe finally figures out the secret to being creative-yet realizes that if everyone is original through the same medium, then no one is original.
To symbolize the final secret of creativity, I drew an ornate box with flowers and intricate designs. The box is beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, there is nothing at all- showing that while the prospect of being at the top is very attractive, once you get there, you have nothing. The hands cradling the box represent hard work, yet are purple (the color of royalty) to show Joe’s desire to work hard to achieve elite status. However, the hands get darker and get a furrier feel as they approach the box, showing how dark and savage Joe has become by the end of the story. The typography, with its business-like feel, displays the words that Joe becomes obsessed with. “Hierarchy” and “ascension” are written along the hands, representing the forces weighing down his abilities. The gloomy radial scheme serving as the backdrop symbolizes the moody feel of the story, and the hopelessness Joe feels. There is one sentence that says "I believe in originality" that expresses the one minor hope within Joe, which eventually dies.
