Narrative Illustration: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Tara Popovic´ (2018)

My flash fiction is about a teenage girl in a half-deserted post-apocalyptic city who is trying to survive and fight for her survival. She is sad with the terms of her existence in such a depressed and empty world, but she tries to mask it with a quirky attitude and a scrunchie or two.

The process of creation for my creature started with a compilation of possible animals to match the personality traits of my flash fiction character and basic sketches of what the potential hybrid might look like. I chose a hummingbird because my character developed a flighty-ness to survive in her tough world. The giraffe neck and head represented the camouflage that the character used to mask their uncertainty. The chameleon eyes represented the character’s ever-watchfulness and the angler fish light was the character’s attempt at self-guidance. Out of the sketches of different angles, I picked the one I most liked - with accessories on my character - and took it into Adobe Illustrator. I set up one artboard where I would create the creature and another where I would create the background of the post-apocalyptic hellscape. To create the character I started by placing images from the internet of the animal part that would make-up my character. I would then proceed to trace with the pen tool over the shape and details of the animal part. When I did this to all the parts I wanted, I sized all the pieces and put them together so they created a cohesive hybrid shape. For my background, I was required to provide an environmental context and use linear perspective to add depth of field to my illustration. I implemented the same tracing strategy (over images from the internet) with my background. When I had finished all the tracing and piecing together, I had to select a pantone color scheme to fill my character and background. To do this, I found a section in a color book of pantone swatches and chose a selection of colors that I would need in my illustration to complete it. The most difficult part of the creation process for me was getting the different pen tool-ed pieces of animal to fit together into one coherent hybrid and then match with the background on top of that. If I were to go back and re-work my project, I would spend more time on the details of everything to make it more similarly realistic. I would also certainly spend more time choosing my background and making it realistically detailed. Overall; however, I am pleased with how my character came out considering how much time and effort I put into it.