Art and Design Commons^™

Vinyl Cover, Lauryn Harden

Illustration Student Work

For this assignment, I wanted to tell a story of a girl unraveling the stories of the abandon kingdom she's entering. I went a surreal, atmospheric theme for this playlist so I can capture the curios yet ominous journey that the character is about to face. The song that I choose to reflect the illustration was White Palace by Christopher Larkin. The setting has a monochromatic scheme of grays while the character had dulled out colors to show that she's out of place. The character is about to cross the bridge, making her way towards the palace.

A Perfect Escape: Fantasy, Place And Narrative In Adolescence, Cydney Cherepak

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the realms of special places, the literary genre of fantasy, narrative, and comics. These topics are traversed alongside subjects of adolescence and the creation of stories for middle-grade readers. Framed with personal stories, as well as peaks into my process, I investigate these subjects through the lens of my own life and work, specifically my thesis project, a comic for middle-grade readers titled Beyond the Castle Walls. Beginning with adolescence in association with special places, I consider the work of developmental psychologists David Sobel and Edith Cobb as they pin-point the role of secret forts, nature, …

Fictitious Ecology, Paulina Zuckerman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

My thesis project, The Mountain Fog, is a children’s picture book pitch that tells a light-hearted story of two dogs who must face an environmental disaster. In this accompanying critical essay, I break down the process of crafting a fictional relationship between author-illustrator, animal characters, and the environment. It begins through the context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories,” which identifies seeing the world through two lenses - the Primary world and the Secondary world. From these terms, I navigate the idea of a fictitious ecology, an encapsulated anthropomorphic world governed by the creator’s personal experience with nature. This …

Forgotten Things: A Historian's Tale, Mary Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Forgotten Things: A Historian’s Tale is a story of a post-human world where magic and creatures of lore have taken sovereignty over the land, following the adventures of Aster, a small flower elf whose job is to travel and document the residual traces of humanity. Every crumbling building, decaying record, and seemingly useless bauble of humanity tells a story, one that Aster is trying to find the conclusion to. One day, rumors start to circulate. Whispers that there might still be humans hidden away somewhere. Aster is thrilled about this, hoping that she might be able to talk with a …

Tony Moy Interview, Sarah Song

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Tony Moy is a mixed media artist who focuses on watercolor and Gouache living in downtown Chicago. He has published art in books from the X-files, Dungeons and Dragons, Tome I & II, Memory Collectors and among others. In addition, Tony has over 10 years of teaching experience and currently teaches illustration and design at the School of the Art Institute. His inspiration comes from studying traditional and classic watercolorists combined with the modern influences of pop culture comics, anime and fantasy. https://www.tonymoy.art/about-me

Escapism: Indulging In Daydreams, Tanruk Pairoj-Boriboon

Theses and Dissertations

A fantasy world, that exists only in our minds, provides us a place where we can mentally escape from everyday reality. Escapism, such as indulging in daydreams, allows us to experience comfort and makes us feel safe, eliminating feelings of insecurity and vulnerability.

This study aims to use playfulness and reverie as a tool to access and confront mental discomforts. Transforming disturbing situations into an experience of reverie; a correction of unsatisfying reality, by converting a solid component of the real world into a desirable infinite form will provide alternative viewpoints.

Throughout my work, this method has been employed to …

The Living Chain: An Applied Exploration Of Mythological Narrative And Traditional Printmaking Techniques, Jordan M. Gillenwater

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Living Chain is a body of work built to apply and analyze mythological narrative and traditional printmaking techniques. The work is a collection of prints telling an original narrative that derives much of its visual and thematic style from the works of the Baroque and Medieval periods, as well as significant influence from the prints of Gustave Doré. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ideas, mythologies, histories, and symbols found in and inspiring the work, in order to better understand the work’s purpose and its technical challenges. Additional focus is given to the historical significance and …

Drawing With Milo, Jarod Roselló

Occasional Paper Series

Having illustrated his essay in the style of a comic or graphic novel, Roselló captures the dynamics of his negotiations with young Milo, including his own self-doubt, through both language and image.

Victorian Counter-Worlds And The Uncanny: The Fantasy Illustrations Of Walter Crane And Arthur Rackham, Amzie A. Dunekacke

UCARE Research Products

I will prepare an in-depth examination of the different, often opposing ways illustrators Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham portray elements of fantasy in their fairy tale illustrations. Fantasy in fairy tales became very popular during the “Golden Age of Illustration” in Britain, which lasted from the mid nineteenth century until the First World War. Fantasy served as a form of escapism from the rigidity of Victorian society and the increasingly industrialized culture. In my examination, I will focus on how Crane and Rackham’s separate styles use or abandon elements of fantasy such as the horrific and grotesque, anthropomorphism of animals …