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Awakened by the Quake: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Sukie Dakin (2018)

My flash fiction encompasses the life of Ferley, a very tall, awkward workaholic who secretly seeks love and attention but never ventures to tackle the subject of love by any means. In my flash fiction, Ferley goes about his daily routine, which consists of a lot of working and non-communication with any other being, except for his pet feline and a robot maid he engineered himself in place of a human companion. After a days hard work, Ferley comes home to a nearly empty house, and after some time of self-contemplation, an earthquake strikes his home and demolishes it.

In order to assemble Ferley as an animal, I compiled his attributes which corresponded to the animal-parts I chose to make up the creature inspired by his character. The hybrid animal I created consisted of a koala, a caterpillar, and a giraffe. Making the face of my character a koala was supposed to signify Ferley's sleep deprivation, from being a workaholic. I used the pen tool to trace a cartoon koala head which a very over-enthusiastic grin, showing how his character also seeks love and attention but neglects to find it and ignores his feelings, therefore putting on the facade of being happy. I wanted my animal to also be hunched over his desk, to show the uncomfortable and back-breaking elements of non-stop working. I also traced a caterpillar using the pen tool and filled the shape of the caterpillars body, making up his back/torso, using minimalistic colors. Lastly, for his legs, I chose to trace giraffe legs, again signifying the height and lanky qualities my character possessed. I chose to do a very dark background, only having a very small light source from an industrial hanging lamp I created and filled with the pen tool, to show the solidarity and loneliness of my hybrid animal. He is also sitting at a desk surrounded by loose papers to exemplify the hardworking attributes my character possesses as well. I was content with my work, even though I regretted using the caterpillar element after I started working with the non-muted colors for everything else other than the body. Next time I would definitely change the layout and animal elements if I had more time to do so.
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