Planet A: The Illustration world of Anja

The best thing about the second half of junior year is getting to work on a “mini” thesis to prepare you for senior year. I’ve mentioned my idea briefly before when I was thinking about a concept I wanted to try. Over winter break I had the idea of illustrating a narrative of a young woman in the mid 1960s who wants to race in the Grand Prix but has to disguise herself as a man in order to pursue it. How do you take this concept and stretch it into 3 pieces that all tie in together? It wasn’t until early on in the year when I became inspired by old movie posters, stuff from the 30’s up until the early 70’s when posters were eye-catching illustrations of your favorite legendary actors and actresses. So I thought, hey, why not make my narrative into a live-action flick? And from the many inspirations I kept on file, came these preliminary sketches. I wanted to make sure I captured the essence of photo-montage and narrating at the same time without giving too much away or too little. Nothing is set in stone, I may or may not rework the ideas a little more.