Welcome to my Zenith webpage! For my final Freestyle project, I created three textile illustrations all inspired by the make-believe movie I came up with for the Senior Design Movie Poster Project.
I chose this as my project because it enabled me to combine my interests in Design and Film together and allowed me to learn new skills. It also challenged me to rethink how to produce an illustration, I am used to using mediums such as colored pencil and paint but using fabric was a challenge that I wanted to overcome.
My inspiration for this project comes from Martin Smatana, an artist and Illustrator based in Slovakia who primarily works in fabric and paper to create his work. His book titled, “A Year of Good News” highlights positive stories he learned about despite the whole world being on lockdown due to COVID. I was inspired by his ability to bring joy to people’s faces in a time of chaos for so many so I knew I wanted to do the same.
Rather than focusing on real stories, I chose to have my illustrations resemble scenes and character-related objects from my make-believe movie, Cyclorama. The story follows a young girl (whose career goals are inspired by my own) who wants to grow up to become a production designer and always has her idea journal filled with her drawings and notes. One day she wakes up to find that the journal is missing and that her drawings and ideas had become a reality so she must go on a journey to find the journal in order for her to restore the universe.
I ended up producing three illustrations: a character pack for the main character, the bedrooms/setting of the protagonist and her two best friends, and the final scene with all three characters where they find the journal.
I encountered several ups and downs with this project, my biggest struggle was timing. I had intended to go much further with this project than I did, I wanted to create a fourth illustration, animate portions of them, and design my own patterns. I ended up not being able to get to that point because I was so consumed by cutting and gluing the fabric for three illustrations alone along with all my other school work.
Reflection: Though it didn’t end up being exactly what I had in mind, I am still really proud of my end result. I feel that this was an extremely fun and experimental project that pushed me creatively, I had to learn how to create depth using only fabric and felt and I had to make each illustration cohesive in terms of color with the limited amount of colors of felt I had.
I hope you like my project! Below is my Zenith Presentation.