The basis of my creative project stems from a question brought up in the research I have completed over the semester. In the past five weeks, I spent time researching not only the life and work of documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark, but also the history and use of silhouette in fine arts. Exploration in both of these areas has led to further experimentation in my own work, both during this course and outside of it. My project primarily aims to create a collection of photographs that portray my perception of mental illness through personal reflection and casual documentation.

In this animation storyboarding, I used a lot of things like color or shapes to represent certain points. I used a variety of washed-out or grey-tinted blues to represent the feeling of isolation and separation.

The box is a symbol of creativity or locked creativity, while also representing a sort of block similar to an art block. The mix of colors is the creativity itself. The panels show the interaction of isolation and art.

This is a 36-page comic expressing external impacts (environmental, social, etc.) on one’s response to intimacy. It matters to humanity because these external impacts not only reveal one’s living environment but also human nature, which causes intimacy to be what it is. So, I felt the necessity to express it in my creative project.

Collection of student works

Throughout this character design project, I wanted to determine and personify the future of art, hoping to answer the question of “what concepts, styles, and mediums do we reject currently, but will praise in the next fifty years?”