This project was a part of our school assignments on the 1st semester at KEA.

Our task was to create a short illustrated story. This assignment was not just to show our skills in Illustrator but first and foremost to improve our storytelling skills. We were tasked to create a character and describe it, make some background and storyboard.

Since I used to do some illustration as a child, I decided I want to come back to one of my old characters and work with that.

My story consists just one character, little girl called Trine. She is 11 years old and she has a characteristicly big eyes. Other kids are laughting at her because of those eyes. Due to that, Trine is sad and wants to be like others. She cries until she gets the idea of wiping her face off. She is suddently a girl without it's own face...like the others - people, who are trying to be like someone else, so they loose their own face and personality.

The message is, that people should embrace their personality, even their flaws, because that is what makes them unique. Beeing like other's meens beeing without a face.

The storyboard I created was pretty simple;

Beginning scene of a walking trine from a bird perspective and zoom-in on her crying face. That sequence would repeat 3 times, until she cries her face of.

Another scene is when Trine get's the idea of wiping her face off.

Following sequence is interactive - to draw Trine's face back on.

The ending sequence is just a close up look on a Trines face (without a face actually) and a slogan "Stay with your face! Stay who you are!"

Since I wanted to work with my own drawings from my childhood, I decided, that design of both my character and a background should be like a child's drawing or doodling. I went for a simple design with overdone expressions (especially in a face) to give it rather dynamic accent.

Color scheme is also very simple, I used just black, red and white, which makes a powerful contrast and also give the story a little melancholic but still sofisticated mood.

Both the character of Trine and backgrounds were created in Illustrator and then proceed in Photoshop to create a gif.