Carla McCarron

2020 Senior Exhibition Artists

Carla McCarron

Art + Design: Illustration

Biography

Carla McCarron is an illustrator and designer with a large range of interests, both within and outside of the art world. She will graduate from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with her BFA in illustration and plans to work and grow before heading back to school to study art in Japan. Carla is beginning to run her own branding under the pen name “Click Myth”, in hopes of using her artistic skills to bring to light more understanding in issues that are important to her, such as mental health, as well as furthering her artistic storytelling abilities.

Statement

My work for my senior year started in character development. The art of storytelling is something I strive to better myself in, and the characters of the story are what make or break its impact on the viewer. Narrowing down into a single focus for the year was tough, as there were so many things I wanted to try and explore; however, character development seemed like a good stepping stone down the path I see myself going with my art. The focus surrounds my created characters, Koga Katsumi, and Sugino. Katsumi lives in a secret village of ninja warriors that are often asked to assist the royal family. Sugino is the (unknowingly adopted) son of the Shogun, the ruler of their state along with his council. Katsumi started with no name and no base other than the very vague outline of the world from the short story concept. Once she was visually created, the details of her personality, family and ninja profession were created. Her appearance unintentionally reminded me of one of my best friends, so I also tried to steal aspects of her personality and incorporate them into her character. The setting is in a Japanese Tokugawa era inspired setting, fused with futuristic elements; a world where the traditional and the technological merge more harmoniously than in our own world. I dove into research regarding world building, storytelling, Japanese history (specifically, the rise and fall of the samurai), as well as samurai weapons and armour. This was the beginning of Sugino’s character creation, meant to be an opposite to Katsumi’s fiery personality. Once Katsumi’s character had fully come alive, I started writing and developing their world, giving skeleton outlines to the terrain, transportation, the state of their world’s politics and even history. Although many of those aspects will not appear in my artwork as of now, they played an important role in the development of the character’s and where they could go. This experience helped me realize that character development goes beyond the character’s face, hair, and clothes, and the challenge of expressing these new character’s personalities even in subtle ways to help make them come to life.