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In Memory: A Junior Creature by Allison Huang (2021)

My short story, "In Memory," follows a girl as she cleans out the very last of her belongings before leaving home for college. She discovers a box filled with memorandums from her childhood from before she moved across the country — photos from school, letters written with friends, and a coral journal containing the thoughts of her younger mind. As she leaves through the artifacts, she finds herself touched by how loved she was by the community she moved away from and slightly troubled by how much she's forgotten about them over the years.

The creation of this illustration using Adobe Illustrator was done in two parts: the creature and the background. I created the hybrid animal character, representative of my story's main character, by taking the head of an owl, nose of a tortoise, body of a panda, tail of a dolphin, and wings of a honeybee. The owl and tortoise were chosen to reflect the introspective but grounded nature of the girl, while the honeybee, dolphin, and panda hint at the friendly and easygoing side of her, which is explored more through the snapshots of her younger self. I chose to set the scene in my character's bedroom since that's where the story takes place. However, much of the imagery in the story creates a dream-like atmosphere as the girl rediscovers her past, so I tried to color the scene to reflect that. Most of the physical parts within the room are dark gray while blue, purple, and red light bleeds through from the background. While there are pictures scattered across the ground as described in the story, the walls fade into mountains that represent the world of introspection that the girl is falling into. Related website
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