In my short story, the main character is a senior in highschool named Jazmine (Jaz) who is about to leave for college. She lives in Florida and got accepted into her dream school in England, Oxford, but she is obliged to stay home and help her sister who is ill with an undiagnosed disease. The story describes Jaz’s and her sister’s close relationship, but also shows how Jaz is resisting going to college because she is so busy helping her sister. At the end of the story, Jaz’s sister finds her acceptance letter to Oxford and compels her into going. The scene I decided to illustrate is the scene in the airport when Jaz is about to take off and leave her family. This was an important turning point in the story and it depicts a lot of the emotions that the story was building up to. In the illustration, my creature, depicted as Jaz, is shown walking towards the terminal to begin her new life away from home.
I created my illustration using Adobe Illustrator. I chose to build my hybrid creature using five different animals: chameleon, leopard, eagle, deer, and dragonfly. The body of the creature is a chameleon. Chameleons are known to camouflage to their surroundings and blend in, as if they are hiding. This matches well with Jaz’s personality and how she often hides her emotions in order to do what is best for her family. I incorporated leopard legs and eagle feet to represent the strength and perseverance that my character has. Despite her internal struggles, she never gave up when things got difficult. I used linear perspective to illustrate the airport that my creature is standing in to give it a real-life, 3D sense. I encountered some problems when first creating my creature because I wasn’t sure how to blend all the different animal body parts together smoothly and how to make the background look more interesting than a plain, dull airport. In the end, I think I addressed these problems to the best of my abilities and I am overall pleased with the outcome of my final illustration.
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