Socializing (Isabela Colon Matthews): “When I learned about the “City of Fairfax Opportunity” promotion of Live Life Connected, I thought it could be a fun idea, so I volunteered to focus on the socializing theme. At first I had a bit of trouble thinking about a main subject for my piece; I had a basic idea but that wasn’t enough. My teacher provided us with drawings that were categorized with the themes which inspired me. I designed the characters wearing warmer clothing because I had the theme of winter imprinted in my mind since I was crafting the drawing around the festive season. Funny enough, the outfits themselves are inspired by clothing from one of my favorite video games, the variety of clothing styles allowed me to mix the different styles to make distinctive outfits. My personal favorite is the girl on the left’s design, creating the pattern was certainly a challenge. I was thinking of letting them walk down a city street, but when I tried placing them in that setting I didn’t like the result. I still wanted to make it look like they were walking down a city street, so I chose to use the effect of bright lights, in the distance, lining up around them. I like to think that there’s a light show going on around the city they’re walking in. I included falling snow for an additional movement effect which was like icing on the cake.”