A New Character Sheet for Taya
There she is! That’s my girl! Her design has really changed since the beginning of fall semester.
I think she looks more mysterious now. Her design is definitely less complicated.
Fine Art Fables: How The Rainbow Was Made
How The Rainbow Was Made is a creation story from the Ojibwe Nation, a group of Indigenous peoples that occupy the northern midwest and northern plains of the United States, and the southern portions of Canada.
While I cannot find the most reliable source material for the myth (it’s mostly online forums or blog postings where I’ve found it discussed) the gist of the story remains the same. The story starts off with Nanabozho, a shapeshifting spirit that is prominent in Ojibwe storytelling, looking out the window of his house by a waterfall and being bored by the fact all of the flowers were white. He gathered up paints, went into the meadow, and began painting all of the flowers. However, two bluebirds were playing, zipping through the skies around Nanabozho. The birds brushed through Nanabozho’s paint pots repeatedly. The paint on their wings dripped into the sky, and through the mist of the waterfall turned into the first rainbow. Nanahozho was pleasantly surprised, and ensured that the rainbow would float permanently above the waterfall.
The image I made for this week includes the core elements of the story with the two blue birds flying by a waterfall and a rainbow. I thought it might be a little too hard to depict the waterfall itself, so I added a splatter of blue/white to mimic mist. I do not wish to represent the Ojibwe peoples in an incorrect or insensitive way through this artwork/blog post, so if anything is inaccurate please let me know in the comments!
Evolving Emotions: Bliss in the Dark
Setting in the west
Purple and blue hues
Over the plains of grass
A peace fills the air
Dotted with stars
My friend sits in the sky
Pronounced against the black
We are alone together.
My neck cranes
To witness his light
Grazing my face
I lay in the grass
Looking out
Darkness surrounds me
Concealing my existence
Only acknowledged by my friend in the sky
A profound comfort washes
Across my skin.
The softness of the breeze
The chill of the night
The peace in this place.
No judgement
No eyes upon my flesh
Probing my mind.
Just me on the Earth
And my friend in the sky
How blissful is anonymity
The release of the pressure to conform
The anxiety of inadequacy
The worries for the future
And the loathing of the past.
My friend steadies me
I shine with him
Our bliss in the dark.
Immersive #22: Behavioral Interviews
Whether or not you’re currently on the job or internship search, these questions will most likely linger within your mind in an uncomfortable way, and most likely you’ll also have answers to these questions, carefully crafted from the experiences you’ve had throughout your life. As any professional will say, come prepared to an interview and you’re sure to present your best self to an interviewer. Perhaps you’ll even land an offer if you’re lucky. But, these questions barely scratch the surface of who we are as an individual—a living breathing human being. It’s hard to condense your entire life into a 3 minute pitch without removing the aspects of yourself that make you truly unique. After all, there is beauty and power in all facets of your being and to present one aspect over another creates a different persona of yourself for others to imagine and interact with. All of this isn’t to say that we’re all hiding our true selves and being deceptive when we do that because these interviewers are often strangers who haven’t yet earned access into our authentic self. But, this negotiation and presentation of our identity in semi-public spaces is worth considering, even if it’s for something as simple as a check-list interview.
Industrious Illustrating #5 – AEIOU
Welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! This time, we’re going back to looking at sketches developing a more finished story.
The AEIOU in the title stands for Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users, which is an acronym that my Drawing Visualization professor came up with for these sketch assignments. I was supposed to draw at least five sketches per page focused around these topics in relation to a planned short comic.
Activities
Environments
Interactions
Objects
Users
Not all of these sketches are going to be directly used in my short comic. The short comic will focus on an ex-soldier who contemplates the names he’s been called in the past when he has to decide whether or not he’ll answer to his civilian name of “Toshiaki Mizushima”. Some of these characters will appear in his flashbacks as former friends or current comrades, but they may not appear exactly the same as they appear in these sketches. Additionally, there’s a much longer post-apocalyptic cyberpunk story involving these characters and this world, so the short comic is just a teaser of the longer narrative I plan on telling someday.
Since this comic assignment is due next week, I should have a finished comic to show off for next week’s column. See you guys next Friday!
