Engulfed: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Kaitlyn Ecklund (2018)

I wrote my flash fiction about a five-year old boy, named James, who in the chaos of evacuating, gets left behind alone as a forest fire begins to engulf his neighborhood. Throughout the story James is constantly in danger, however he proceeds to go on completely ignorant of what’s occurring in his surroundings and goes on a mini adventure.

We began our design projects by creating sketches of our main character by creating a mixture of animals that we felt embodied our character and their personality. I sketched my hybrid animal as a cross of a sloth, gorilla and fawn. I wanted my hybrid creature to be youthful and innocent just like James; how even though he was in immediate danger, he never took notice and went on having a fun adventure. The sloth and fawn, I felt, captured his innocence and frailty in the situation. I chose the gorilla to represent the sort of independent spirit that he has to explore and be curious. In the story, he is abandoned in his neighborhood as a forest fire begins to ravage the surrounding buildings and houses so I placed my hybrid character in a neighborhood with a raging forest fire in the back. I am really pleased with my work as I tried to make each detail specific to the story and make my hybrid creature embody my character’s personality as much as possible - which I believe I did successfully.