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Foster: A Junior Design Student - Narrative Character by Syd Johnsen (2019)

The short story I wrote in English is about a foster child named Jessica who moves into a home in New York. As Jessica experiences a new life in a city, she searches for a more permanent lifestyle with a family that loves her. I illustrated a city environment as my background to represent New York. The color scheme I used for my setting consisted of blue and orange tints to keep the background muted. In the story Jess is shown as a strong, independent and fearless girl. She has fierce, engaging, bright green eyes as well. After creating the scene, the prompt for this project was to combine several animals together to create a metaphorical creature that represented my main character. I combined a lions head, snake tail, owl wings, bunny ears, and bright green cat eyes. The lions head and snake tail represents Jessica’s strength through rough times. I used owl wings to show the courage Jess had when moving into a new home. The bunny ears express the sensitive side she has, just wanting loving parents. Bright green eyes were her most distinct characteristic in the story, and I felt the illustration would not have been as intriguing without that detail.

Although this was an individual project, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of all my peers. We started the project off with nothing but our own creative ideas and sketchbooks. We then discussed our ideas as a class and gave each other feedback. From there, we went on the internet to find animals and environments that matched our stories, and began to blend in Photoshop. Using Illustrator, we learned how to trace and draw our scene. We all quickly learned that the use of several layers on each artboard was crucial to our success. Throughout the couple months working on this project, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator, work with color schemes, and collaborate creatively with my peers. Related website
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