The Creation of My World

In Digital Illustration we had to create a world of our own that showcased space. I came up with the idea of a post-apocalyptic world that had animals in it, but humans no longer existed. Coming up with how this world came to be was a little hard for me but the actual creation of this world was the fun part.

Now, normally it takes me a little bit to come up with a few ideas. However, this idea came to me right away and I loved every minute I created it. I have ADHD and sometimes it can be hard for me to focus on certain things. Other times I tend to hyper-focus on tasks and the world around me doesn't exist anymore. This was one of those times. In the past, this has only happened while I play video games, and that's because it is something that I really enjoy doing. While I honestly enjoyed doing most of my assignments for my art classes, I have never hyper-focused on them as I did with this one.

I started with the broken and damaged buildings. I wanted them to look desolate and like they had been in a war some time ago. From there I started to create the lake which was extremely simple. I just reflected the sky, made the silhouettes of the buildings, and reflected those also. My next step was making all the rocks with their shadows. I copied those and distorted them, so it looked like it wraps around the lake on the opposite side. Then I made all the grass, bushes, and trees.

Creating the animals was my last step but it took me a good amount of time to perfect them. I get so detail-oriented in my designs that it ends up taking hours to complete them. Which in the case of this particular project I was totally okay with. Since the file was getting so big for this project, I made both animals in a different file and then transported them into this one. I made one deer and then copied it, reflected it, made it smaller, and placed it in the background. The fish in the lake is my favorite part of the whole picture. It took forever to try and get the water reflection just right, and the detail in the fish is amazing.

If you were to look at each separate thing individually, there is an insane amount of detail in it. This whole piece took a little more than two days to complete. Waking up early and starting on it to stay up late and forcing myself to go to bed. For that entire time, my hyper-focus was so bad. I was so intensely into this project that I would have to remind myself to drink water or get up to move around every once in a while. With that being said, it also helped me realize that I chose the right field for what I want to do in life. I had so much fun creating this and can only grow with my technique from here.