My short story, Prickly Green Bench, is about an 18-year old taking a gap-year after high school trying to figure out his path in life. He sits on the same green bench outside the Café Rosé every day for hours on end, observing the people in the area; he calls this “people-watching”. This gives himself a sense of hope and comfort because he is very fearful of his future. He eventually meets an older man who people-watches in the same area and learns from his character because this man is essentially an older, wiser, version of himself. My character breaks through and realizes what he wants to do with his life- go to college and play piano- and takes action in order to do so. At the end of the story, he says his last goodbyes to the bench and leaves in a taxi to the airport to start his life. I thought that the green bench in front of the cafe would be an ideal spot to capture as my background.
I built my character using five different types of animal parts to represent five different traits: a turtle shell to represent reserved, an elephant head to represent hopeful, hummingbird wings to represent socially-awkward, praying mantis legs to represent unsatisfied, and cat ears to represent worried. In Adobe Illustrator, I primarily used the pen tool to trace the actual body parts of the animals and for my background I used an image for reference, but mostly freehanded it. I surrounded the cafe and bench with clouds to symbolize how my character is always in his own world, disconnected from the rest of society, going off of the saying, “head in the clouds”. I used linear perspective to show that the cafe and bench is 3D and give it more of a realistic look. I am very pleased with the way my character looks, but I want to adjust my background more to look more realistic using shadows and highlights, because right now it looks very flat and simple.
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