[Creative Rootsđ] Dragons and Climate Change: Annie Dengâs Roots in Visual Storytelling
Meet Annie Deng, a digital illustrator whose journey began with an online community and led to her passion for Climate Change and the creation of a short Graphic Novel titled âThe Night Journey.â
My first question to Annie Deng (â21) was the basic introductory question Iâm compelled to ask whenever I meet a new Cornellian: major, year, and hometown. Her response to the first indicated to me that her creative roots were nothing but the ordinary.Â
Annie is a College Scholar Major in the College of Arts and Sciences, which allows her to design her own major. As she explained it, her major centers on âvisual storytelling,â combining fine arts, game design, film, PMA, creative writing, and web design classes.Â
After talking to Annie for over an hour, I understood that these array of classes relate back to the start of her journey as a creator: from the suburbs of Vancouver, on a computer, sketchbook in hand, delving into her original form of storytelling - illustrations of fantasy worlds and dragons.Â
đ đź Dragons and Climate Change: Digital Illustration in the World of DeviantArt
âI just always liked reading all the fantasy childrenâs series...Magic Treehouse, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson - all that.âÂ
She soon fell down the rabbit hole of DeviantArt, and found a community of people who shared her love for translating imagination to illustration.Â
DeviantArt is an online art platform that is categorized by every topic you can think of, from Digital Art to Street Art to Fan Art. Annie described how the customizable profile, comment section format, and inbox allows for a more community-based service in comparison to Instagram.Â
As she admired beautiful imagery of dragons, Annie also stumbled upon one specific artwork that then sparked her interest in Climate Change. It depicts a polar bear on an iceberg, melting into a polluted city within an hourglass. She realized that her artwork can have an impact on someone - it can change minds or spark movements, just by conveying powerful emotions that canât always be expressed through words.
DeviantArt was where Annieâs journey as an artist began - in other words, her creative roots. She still shares her artwork on DeviantArt, with one of her recent illustrations titled âWhy Some Places Are Getting Colder.âÂ
âThere is a quote I once saw on DeviantArt - it said, âcame for the art, stayed for the communityâ.... I came to look at the art, but then I kept making art because it felt like such a home.âÂ
Artists online shaped her values, her creativity, and who she is today; if that doesnât sound like magic, I donât know what does.Â
đ„ đ„ External vs. Internal Identities: Annie on her Asian-American Roots and Creating at Cornell
I asked Annie to share more about how her identity ties into her passion. After all, we canât really separate ourselves from our art - it is often one in the same. She touched on her parents as Asian-American immigrants, as well as being a creator at Cornell.
âWhen I expressed the desire to pursue art professionally, there's definitely a very stereotypical âwe don't do that here,â from my parents...The question of what I want to do sort of came about a lot from my family, to some extent telling me that I don't know what I want to do - because it couldn't possibly be art, right? I think that sort of worked its way to my artwork.â
Annie described the struggle of having to find her identity under the âpressure of external identities that you're supposed to have,â as she explains it, compared to what you actually want to do.Â
She also attributed some of that pressure to Cornell, which is why she applied to become a College Scholars major.Â
âI did initially feel a little bit like my interests were slightly out of place here...I think that there was a struggle in that I felt like the thing that I was interested in was not really regarded as a valid intellectual study before I found the College Scholar Program.âÂ
Yet Annie was able to find her own place at Cornell, and the results are fascinating.
đïž đ The Creation of a Graphic Novel: Annieâs Senior Project
Annieâs Senior Project, titled âThe Night Journey,â quite literally reflects this article; it is a sequence of 60 images that tell a story of a girl that felt at a loss, for she wanted to pursue art but faced the struggle of external pressures of who she should be.Â
Then - just like 13-year-old Annie who fell in love with DeviantArt and Magic Treehouse - the girl is transported into a fantasy world where she finally realizes her path.Â
âThis story in particular couldnât be told without imagery. The way that I discovered what I wanted to say was through experiencing the process of creating,â Annie explained as she walked me through her rough sketches.
Annieâs senior project was deeply introspective and personal, which made it even harder to create - and as a result, Annie says the project is still a work in progress.Â
Yet that introspection lent itself to a story that can truly resonate with any student.Â
Throughout her time at Cornell, Annie struggled with the same dilemmas we all face about our classes, major, and career. She delved into the process of trying to calculate her future, filling up journal entries with pro/cons lists, creating a five year and ten year plan, making a weighted scorecard or performing a cost/benefit analysis. But it still didnât seem to leave her with a satisfying answer.Â
âI realized that a lot of times you already know what you want - but you convince yourself that you donât and you feel like you have to do all these calculations to figure it out. The way you figure out what you want comes from your intuition. As kids, we always know what we want. Somewhere along the way we get distracted.â
Ultimately, the character finds her true path in life - and it's simply by following that one feeling we all strive for: happiness.Â
For a moment, imagine stepping into the world of The Night Journey. What path would Annieâs fantasy world take you?
By Ainav Rabinowitz
CC Writing Lead
Ainav is a junior in Arts and Sciences majoring in Government. She is a writer, artist, and podcast-enthusiast with a passion for politics and history. She can be reached at alr287@cornell.edu.
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