Behind a Glass Wall: A Junior Experimental Project by Jacob Behar (2013)

I have always been mystified by unicorns and other creatures most people believe to be ''mythological.'' For my experimental unit, I decided to bring my signature mystical creature, (the Unicorn-mer-man) into a physical place. My goal was to portray the feeling of awe and wonder through curiosity. The Unicorn-Mer-Man’s displeased look represents his anger for being trapped in an aquarium. He is upset because, being a rare creature, he is constantly observed and stared at through a wall of glass and has no privacy.

To create this image, I used Adobe Illustrator to animate the upper body of the muscular unicorn man. I struggled to find a lower body that fit well but eventually, decided that a tail would fit him well. I messed with adding scales but when it came down to the last minute, I had to get rid of them because curling the scales around the bottom of the tail was too time consuming and did not turn out well. When I finished the character, I placed him, in Adobe Photoshop, over a picture I took at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I struggled to put a filter over the Mer-Man to make him appear under water, but eventually found a way. I copied the right half of the picture and placed it on a new layer on top of both the girl and the Mer-Man. I dropped the opacity and blurred the fish that overlapped the Unicorn.