They Could Not Play

I finished illustrating Leir's story for the children's storybook competition hosted by our school's guidance center last Wednesday. It wasn't that easy (thanks to the inavailability of a scanner) for I have to do all the illustrations directly on Soul (my laptop) using Adobe Photoshop's pen tool, ruler, and guide lines. I wasn't able to copy exactly my original character designs for the story's protagonists, Jack and Jill, but I think I did a good job coming up with a cute version of the characters still. Kuya Ken told me that they look like me when I was younger. That is proof enough that they're adorable (at least physically).

Sample page

     The competition's theme is gender equality, that Leir and I decided that the character be twins, who are, as innocent as they are, have no concept of their difference in terms of gender. Leir's first draft of the story was amusing enough to inspire me to work on it harder than I ever did with my previous artworks. It's just tragic that he has to trim the story to fit the requirements of the competition, which limits the writers to use only 250 words. I think this is a good practice, however, for the word-count was able to set boundaries, else we might end up writing a lengthy piece without much quality content. (Leir is a different story though--the longer the piece, the meatier it is.)

Title page

   
     Leir suggested the title They Could Not Play for the story after recommending the titles A Feasibility Study on Children's Perspective on Gender Equality and The Children Could Not Play. We even got into a fight finalizing the title, because he said that I seem not too impressed with the title, but I am. I really am. What the hell is wrong with my facial expressions?
     Gab also submitted his story, Forest Friends, to the competition. I took the trouble of looking for someone not that busy to finish 5 or more illustrations in just one day. Luckily Van, Monique, and Tina were bored enough to take the job. Sir Jay told me that only Leir's and Gab's stories were submitted to the competition, which, in many levels, sucks. It sucks. I hope that's not true, not because I wanted to win, if ever we will win, against a larger number of participants, but because... yes, it's mostly because of that.

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Ateneo Literary Association (ALA) won 4 awards during the 2nd Student Organizations' Awards and Recognition (SOAR) Night held in the Arrupe Convention Hall, Ateneo de Naga University, last Monday. As the organization's chairperson this school year, I couldn't be any more proud of them. Keep it up, ALA.