Ella Larson
Art and Design Portfolio
Guardians
To experiment with human anatomy and anatomy manipulation, I created a sort of deer creature which watches over a dying forest. Their final design will likely be much different, but this was a fun test to layer anatomy and create a creature from the bones outward.
The guardians are all female (ish), and taller than the average human. Because there are only about twenty left in this fictional world, they have banded together in one social group, but their forest is slowly dying due to a fungus. (The fungus is probably related to [humans?] and their environmental carelessness, but I'd like the final version to be more complicated than simple pollution). Their final design will probably be more alien, and they will almost certainly be clothed.
Platform Game Character Designs
I created these characters to play around with having strong shapes and designs that would be scalable and visible from a distance. I imagine these guys as the protagonists of a single- or multiplayer fantasy platforming game where one can switch between characters in order to access different abilities and weaknesses.
I've included some pieces of concept art because concept art is fun!
Fairy Tale Illustrations
These are a series of illustrations I made for several fairy and folk tales. I tried to stick to a more graphic, flat language for maximum impact and simplicity, and went with a tritone color scheme for each to emphasize a sort of "poster" quality.
The images will be updated with less-shadowed images in due time.
Grey Matters Journal
I worked with the neuroscience magazine Grey Matters Journal at Vassar College in order to create illustrations for an article on fear and exposure therapy -- Facing Our Fears: Extinguishing Conditioned Fears with Exposure Therapy by Alex Tansey.
To create the illustrations, I went back and forth with Alex and sometimes the editors and other artists to make a series of images representing fear and how it transforms our perceptions. Alex liked the idea of focusing on spiders, a common and visceral fear, so I drew many many spiders for the piece, both scary and not-so-scary. Since she also talked about the "Little Albert" experiments, we used that example to create a diagram explaining how conditioning influences our reactions.
I had so much fun with this, both getting feedback from the author, and making a bunch of really disgusting spiders, which was much more fun than it should have been.
Miscellaneous Theatre
I did a lot of theatre in high school and college, usually either acting, or making props, posters, or other miscellaneous items. There were so many visually stunning productions I was able to be a part of -- here are some of my contributions.
My Monster and I (Senior Thesis)
My senior art thesis at Vassar involved a lot of things: sleep paralysis, monsters, perceptions of the self, and the monstrous aspects we find and fear within ourselves -- or more specifically, what I fear in myself. In short, I took the idea of the "monster" and turned it inward, imagining my own "Monster," a representation of my fears, anxieties, doubts, and angers, as a separate, similar entity who continues to haunt me. The project required self reflection, experimentation, character and creature design, and stepping far outside of my comfort zone. In the end I ended up with fifty-some pieces sculpted, drawn, painted, and filmed, a selection of which you see below.
If you'd like to read and see more, I uploaded my full thesis on Vassar's website.
I also made a booklet to go along with the project. I was experimenting with handling my Monster in a more gentle way, as one would explain something to a child through a storybook.
