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Fletcher: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Emerson Domke (2018)

The story I wrote was about a boy who is mean to all the other kids at school until they find out he is neglected at home. The different features in this animal represent the different characteristics of the boy in my story. The snail shell represents the privacy the boy has. He chooses to keep his personal life a secret from any other students. The dolphin head and fins represent the youthfulness and playfulness of the young boy because even though he is dealing with his personal problems, he is still trying to have fun and makes friends. The scorpion legs and tail in the hybrid represents the violent and fierce actions of the boy at the playground with the other kids when he tried to control all the games.

Using Adobe Illustrator, I first started with images of the subjects I wanted with roughly the same angles and positions that I would use in my final product. I traced the shapes of the individual animals and added highlighting and shadows based on the position of the lighting. The most fun concept I learned from this project was two-point perspective, as most obviously seen in the swing structure. The hat and background of the animal is to reinforce the youth of the boy and to tie the whole creature back into the original story, placed in one of the scenes from the story. If I were to re-do this project, I would add more perspective to the animal in order to make it look more realistic.
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