In my short story, the protagonist, Banjo, struggles with choices she has made in her life which have isolated her from other people around her. Since moving away from her family, she has tried her very best to be completely independent from others, which has left her lonely and sad, and missing her old friends. The story opens on a train at night, which is also the scene I drew most inspiration from for this illustration. For me, public transit at night feels eerie and otherworldly. It’s separate from everyday life. It’s a time for reflection and melancholy. Banjo has been going around on the train for almost two hours as the first paragraph opens: “The train felt like a shipping container, windowless and empty, except lit with bright fluorescence and accompanied by half-robotic, half-human voices…” I chose this scene to illustrate because I feel it captures the mood of the story more than any other.
To create this illustration, I first brainstormed animals that symbolise my main character. The platypus head represents Banjo’s isolation from, the people around her, since platypi are known for being elusive the frilled neck lizard frill shows anger, the dog legs are for impulsiveness, the butterfly wings show her free spirit, and finally the tortoise shell is for her contemplativeness. I selected reference images for each one, and traced them in Adobe Illustrator while also assembling them into one creature. I used gradients and transparency to add interest and make it look more real. I chose a color palette from a Pantone color book, for both the background and the foreground. To illustrate the background, I used a photo of a train interior for a reference and used my knowledge of perspective and the pen tool to draw it in Illustrator. I added a night sky, stars and planets to further show the mood of the scene.
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