My illustration is based on a short story I wrote called "An Invisible Girl in a City that Never Sleeps". The protagonist, Magnolia seeks a new life for herself in the city, but finds herself struggling to adjust to such a different lifestyle. In this illustration, I chose to represent the scene at the beginning of my story, where she sits on her fire escape and ponders her past life, wondering if she made the right decision to move. This was also the turning point in the story, where she gets her dream job and realizes that everything will be okay.
When starting this project on Illustrator, I struggled a lot to find pictures of animals I wanted to use for this project. In the end, I chose a parrot to represent cleverness, a lizard for friendliness, an octopus to depict hard-work, a deer for observance, and a fly to represent adventurous. I started by using the pen tool to trace the different parts of the animals I chose, layering the limbs on top of each other and moving them to fit onto the torso. I freehanded my background image, using a reference image of New York for inspiration, and added stars and bright lights to represent the "City that Never Sleeps". I used linear perspective to show the sun rising from the East, and added angled buildings to add depth and perspective. Overall I am fairly pleased with my work, but if I had more time I would change my color palette, and focus more attention onto the tail that I added.
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