Living on the Edge

Last semester, I took a class called the Lab. I made a book called Living on the Edge  and buttons of the animals. The book is about recently extinct animals around the world. "Recently" is referring to the past 200 yrs.  There are many animals are dead or dying as we speak that people never knew about. Here are a few images from my book and the buttons that I sold.

 The Quagga is a subspecies of Zebra that died out. people are still trying bring them back through selective breeding. It is called the Quagga Project.

 The Great Auk was probably my favorite animal in the book. It is not related to the penguin. This was an example of "Evolutionary Convergence", which is when two non-related animals fill the same role of the ecosystem in two different parts of the world. Auks were from the North hemisphere and Penguins are from the Southern hemisphere.

The Carolina Parakeet is what inspired me to wright and illustrate this book. At the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in DC, I was able to handle a dead specimen of North America's only native parrot. I had no idea we ever had a parrot. They were deliberately killed off in  1929 because they were considered "pests".

Current Events

For my Illustrated Book class, we did a warm up assignment where we needed to depict time with a current event. I picked the "Python Problem" in Florida. It is taking place in the morning when children are being picked up from school and letting their dogs out.

Thesis Project

For my Sr. Thesis, I have been creating panoramic illustrations that will stick to the back of terrariums. Backdrops for fishtanks are completely overdone but no one pays attention to snakes and lizards. If you look at PetCo or PetSmart, you will find photopaper on a roll with photos of the fake plants that the petstore sells. I don't think that is good enough for my pets. There are many designs that I am working on  but so far, these are my completed designs.

This is the first of many illustrations that I did to be made for the backgrounds of terrariums. Right now I am printing on a static cling vinyl material that goes on the inside back of the tank. The desert is my most expected background I think. 

This design is inspired by Godzilla, even though there are no animals in the illustration. The idea is to make your lizard or snake look like they destroyed a city. Since many lizard and snake owners use newspaper as bedding and Tupperware for hide boxes and water dishes, this makes a tank look cohesive or intentional. 

This background design is basically a gecko dance party. Most children start out with geckos when they decide that they want a reptile so I focused on what would be fun and colorful. What is great about this design is that the dancing mushroom background (top) goes into the back of the tank and the the characters (below)  stick to the front or sides of the tank. It makes it more interactive. The kids can play with the character stickers and put them wherever they want on or in the tank. 

This is my latest terrarium background. This too is based on  the popularity of geckos. The image is supposed to read as geckos painting a gecko on the back of the tank. I think this one will be popular once I sell them commercially.

Reptile Lifetime Map

This is a timeline ofmy past, present and future pets. It reads from bottomt to top. I am almost happy with it. I need to make it more organized but I love my images.

Map of Xanth

For my Maps class we had a fantasy map assignment. I chose the Xanth series written by Piers Anthony. There are about 35 books in the collection and I've read 16 of them. It is addicting. I am so happy that I had the opportunity to illustrate this for class.