My short story centers on Theodore, a teen who is trying to make friends. He is desperate to connect with someone because he is in a new school. The other students don't seem to like him because he’s a perfectionist. In the story, Theodore is hanging out at the local ice cream shop with Louis, one of his new classmates. Theodore is excited that Louis has invited him, even though it is the hottest day of the year. Theodore is determined to make this new friendship work. When Louis takes a call from his mother — about missed tuba lessons of all things — he hands his ice cream cone to Theodore. As he waits for Louis to return, the ice cream starts to melt. Theodore has a dilemma — let the ice cream melt, or eat it so it doesn't make a mess and waste the ice cream. After having a battle with his conscience, Theodore decides to eat the ice cream. He thinks Louis is going to hate him, but when Louis returns, he tells Theodore he made the right decision by eating the ice cream and not letting it go to waste — and not making a mess. It turns out that Louis is sort of a perfectionist and doesn’t like messes either. To Theodore’s relief, Louis now considers him a friend.
To create my illustration, I used Adobe Illustrator which was a new program for me. It was difficult, but I learned a lot about Illustrator and made it through. We were asked to make the main character from our story a creature. We had to pick five characteristics that matched up with five different animals. I chose perfectionist, controlling, anxious, cautious and awkward as the characteristics. The animals I chose to go along with the characteristics were a cat body, octopus arms, bee wings, chameleon tail and penguin feet. I had to use the pen tool for both the creature and the background, which was difficult for me at first, but I got more comfortable with the pen as I went along. The background is an ice cream shop booth where most of the story happens. I used one point linear perspective to make it look like they were in the corner of the store and pink colors to betray lightheartedness. I could have done better with the tail and the arms, and would probably redo my background because it seems a little plain, but I'm pretty happy with my creature and my story.
Related website
