Guerilla Plum: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Elijah Confortola (2018)

The flash fiction story my illustration is based on revolves a veteran named Bill Plum. He is a lonely, sentimental, slightly delusional, and occasionally violent old man. At one point he mistook a squirrel in his backyard as an enemy soldier. At the end of the story he regains his sanity by rediscovering his love of music instilled in him by his mom at a young age. As the story described, he lived in a calm and desolate place. Most of the plot took place in his backyard.

To create my illustration, I had to start out by brainstorming my character’s different traits. I jotted them down and then sketched out how I would portray these unique characteristics through different physical traits that various animals have. It was hard to do these sketches, though, due to the monotony of trying to achieve accurate linear perspective on paper. When we started our final draft of our illustration on the application Adobe Illustrator, it was easier to execute linear perspective. My final hybrid animal had sharp teeth, a cat’s tail, and was wearing a farmer’s hat. These were just some of the physical portrayals that my character had. They represented his violence, wisdom, and solitude. His location (in his own backyard) was fairly literal, but necessary in my opinion because of how crucial it was to my story.