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Addiction: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Thomas Vrooman (2018)

The story is a bunch of journal entries by a bartender concerning a new patron in their bar. Everyday they come in requesting increasing amounts of alcohol and in the end they get shot and instead of ordering their last drink of alcohol, they order milk instead. Since the bartender does not now who this patron is or what they do, this work conveys that they are a criminal.

This work was done in Adobe Illustrator. To start, I brainstormed the character’s qualities and then related them to different animals. I then gathered a bunch of pictures of the few animals online. Next I placed them into the program and turned the opacity down, positioning the picture of the animal to my preference. I made the mistake of using the brush tool when I had to use the pen tool to outline the collage of animal pictures. Getting that done, I then went on to coloring it in by paintbucketing. Similarly, the background had the same process but the train had to be redone to be stretched and moved back more behind the rock otherwise it would look flat. Linear perspective is used for the train and it needs to be used because it’s facing a direction. Back to the animal, they are made up of a Tasmanian Tiger, a Brown Recluse, and a Thorny Devil. The aspects of the tiger that relate to the character are its gruffness, directness, confidence, and the fact that it’s a decently skilled killer. For the recluse it was for its ritualistic behavior and antisocialness. Lastly the devil was chosen for being careful, being a skilled stealer, and that its habitat is the desert. The traits of all those animals relate greatly to my character who is a bandit in the old western era, hence the train being the model that it is. I’d say I’m alright with how this turned out. The style is consistent instead of changing throughout, but I’m a bit turned off about having to use a certain color pallet. The pallet held its own meaning in that it was acrid and strong but explorative and that it’s used mostly for alcohols. If I had to change anything it would be to not catch an illness for a week, but in the end I think I’m alright with how everything turned out.
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