Brainstorm Blog for Persona Project #1

For this first project, we were asked to create a fake persona to then depict in 12 "selfies", six created with Photoshop and six in Illustrator. When I heard about the parameters of the project the character I wanted to depict almost immediately came to mind.

I have found that sometimes I will take different aspects of my life and problems that I face and personify them into a character in my head, sort of as a way to make a visual metaphor for them.

One of those characters that I wanted to explore is "The Sailor", a pirate-like character that represents exploration, self discovery, experiencing life collecting memories, and how terrifying it can be to try something new or be in a new environment. The transition into my first year at college has definitely had its challenges, so I thought it would be relevant and fun for me to explore this idea further.

The initial idea I have for the character is a pirate who travels various parts of a mysterious world, who loves collecting objects and relics from the places he visits and proudly houses this collection in the cabin quarter's of his ship in addition to mapping and logging everything that he experiences, and through all of this is ironically terrified of venturing into the unknown and the water. After developing the character a little further with the personality quiz, I made some initial thumbnail sketches of ideas I had for some scenes right off the bat.

I also made a list of different symbols that I thought would be important throughout the work, some more rough thumbnail sketches, and some sketches experimenting with his face (mixing aspects of human face and aquatic life).