Investigation: 

My investigation started in August 2024 the beginning of my junior year. During that time I had recently been binge watching zombie/apocalyptic shows The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman , Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead by Haro Aso and illustrated by Kotaro Takata and lastly Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida. I was inspired to create my own zombie apocalypse mini series and in result my investigation inquiry "How Do People Live In A Zombie Apocalypse?" 

Although vague and simple, my investigation has allowed me flexibility in concepts and full creativity. Starting with a deep question would cause more challenges in the future due to having to build upon it, without a basic and solid foundation my works wouldn't have structure or connect overall and my ideas would be limited to an extent. 

Regarding the characters, they have no flushed backgrounds or names. It was never my intention to create OCs with structured lore. Leaving them nearly vague and shallow allows the audience to create their own back stories and doesn't constrain their imagination.

The specific inspiration sections are to show what music, games, or shows inspired me to create these pieces. All of my concepts are original, my process of creating is influenced on what music I listen to. Any listed songs on this page are songs I was inspired the most by. 

Main Elements

Color -was an important aspect I wanted to improve and experiment on. Color can express the emotions and capture the eye in amazing ways, I wanted to achieve the same effect with my art. I love vibrant colors and using bright, bold colors clashes with the melancholy of a zombie apocalypse concept. I experimented with some color theory and it was tricky to grasp, it took a lot of trial and error to finally get my pieces to contain a consistent style of color usage.

Space -tended to be my biggest drawback prior to my drawings before this year, I constantly had little to no depth in my prior pieces and I wanted to fix that. Forcing myself to draw in different perspectives like two point and one point I learned how to create more in-depth scenes. Since my commonly used style is more on the cartoony spectrum I wanted to counteract my bad habit of making everything flat. Using the point perspectives technique forced me to break my habit and rewire my drawing process. 

Texture - was used to vary and create a more interesting scenes. I used a lot of hatching/cross hatching, comic dots, and swirls to avoid my colors looking completely flat. In some areas I used charcoal brushes and paint texture brushes. It was also a way to include the chaos of an apocalypse by implementing textures in the scenery instead of making it smooth and clean. I tried to experiment only with a few techniques at first, but overtime texture became part of this themes style and it keeps the audiences eyes focused. In a way color is the first impression by being bold and captivating but texture leads the eyes around to discover new details the longer you look. 

Why I chose digital over traditional-

I chose to create a majority of my pieces digitally because prior to this year I had only drawn traditionally when it came to school assignments. This year I really only wanted to focus on my skill in the digital area and learning how to use my program efficiently. I've been using Procreate (drawing program) since 7th grade but my progress prior was lackluster and I simply didn't have time to draw or I was facing art block. My traditional skills didn't transfer over smoothly to my digital skills, it went from drawing on paper to drawing on glass and the lack of friction made a lot of my lines wobbly and awkward. Since color was a major priority for my sustained investigation I didn't want to spend extra money on saturated paints and have a limited pallet, colors were more accessible in Procreate and that reason was the overall reason I decided to switch and make the majority of my portfolio digital.

AP Score

5