The works that I have submitted for your consideration were created to establish world building and character dynamics for my narrative writing, as well as a reflection of the influence folklore has had on my storytelling. Three works that will be discussed in this essay are the Poe's List animated segment, The Tea Reading Party illustration, and the Xiomara character model sheet. All works were created in the software Krita, and Poe's List was further edited in Adobe Premeire Pro.
Poe's List was created for an assignment sent to me by a University of North Carolina Wilmington alumni who wishes to submit the full project to late night television blocks such as Adult Swim and Comedy Central. As I am working on the project part- time, he submitted the script to me on a loose timeframe. I'm in charge of character and background design, storyboarding, sound mixing and animation for a test scene to determine the style and aesthetic of the project. In designing Poe, I saw to it that he is always musing over an alcoholic drink of some kind, dabbing his tongue with the narrow straw as if he were about to write his melancholy wit on a bar napkin. Prone to irrational jealousy and delusions of grandeur, he sees himself as the smartest person in the room, and arrogantly cackles to himself. He often has a raven, Nevermore, that appears on to circle his head when he's deep in thought. His reflection in the liquid is a twisted take on the tale of Narcissus, where he is one longing gaze away from his own demise, and he doesn't take kindly to others attempting to share the spotlight.
The Tea Reading Party was influenced by both a love of high tea ceremonies and character building dynamics. Each character is the heroine of their own stories, and the steam from their glasses reveal their past traumas contrasted with their current jubilee. In both fairytales and life, trauma and struggle are mountains in a long journey that can be difficult to overcome with or without magic. The parlor they sit in happens to specialize in tea reading and fortune telling, and by reading each other's stories and possible futures the women have formed a close, understanding bond. This piece was created, printed and shown amongst seven others at the inaugural Artnatomy Art Showcase in 2019, and incorporates animation and augmented reality using the Artivive app. The steam and table animation were also created in Krita, and by attaching the media to the illustration in the app, anyone who scans the media in the present world will see the media come to life on their phones. Artivive is a new technology that I implemented for three pieces in the show, but if I had a choice I would choose to lighten the shading and add more character animation to Tea Reading Party.
The Xiomara character model sheet was created so I could finalize the character's design and teach myself to draw her on model consistently. The character is a Latina Male to Female Transgender soldier princess, and I previously has trouble keeping her height and jawline consistent compared to my other characters. This also the first model sheet I made digitally whilst testing new equipment and found that the quality of my art improved with the new tablet. As the tallest princess, I needed to create a height chart for the first time to measure the characters' height compared to Xiomara's. During the design process, I redesigned the character by giving her an asymentrical hairstyle, detailing on her jeans, a military cape and a dagger on her thigh. As her story is heavily based on The Goose Girl story, her backstory includes having her hair haphazardly chopped off by her enemy to obscure her identity and to humiliate her. The new hairstyle has shown that time has passed and the damage has been dealt with and styled to make the best of a bad situation. The dagger was added to further arm herself in case of danger, rather than trusting the wind to carry her to safety.