Personal Assignment & Background: Fiesta Bowl Fan-Art

A large portion of my interest in animation comes from comic strips, cartoons and video games, all of which led me to draw fan-art as a hobby and influenced my design choices in many art courses. This is some of the most recent fan-art I had drawn of some of PlayStation's mascots, based on an image I saw of a child with the three at the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl in late 2019. From left to right, the mascots shown are Sly Cooper, Ratchet from the Ratchet & Clank series, and Crash Bandicoot. Each of the games they appear in have their designs and animations influenced by those of western cartoons.

The original photo from the Fiesta Bowl this fan-art is based on can be found here on the Instagram page of Cat Power Productions, the costume designers behind the mascots.

Who is this "Alex McMurray"?

Alexander Houston McMurray was born in Nashville, Tennessee and raised in Tampa, Florida. In 2018, he graduated from Brooks DeBartolo Collegiate High School with high honors. For two years, he served as a designer and the chief photographer for the school yearbook. For the rest of his term, he served as an independent photographer at many school events. He also dual-enrolled for a year and took courses in 2-D design and traditional photography at Hillsborough Community College.

Alex is currently a student at the University of Tampa who majors in graphic design, with possible interest in an animation minor. While there, he completed courses of 3-D design, illustration, frame assembly, experimental drawing, and graphic design. Presently, he is studying typography, intaglio printmaking, and 2-D animation.

Alex also manages the social media sites of Floor Coverings International, a flooring industry branch owned and operated by his family. He has designed advertisements for the company that were published in the monthly World of Westchase magazine for several years. Ever since then, he enjoys working with Adobe creative software and continues to strengthen his skill and abilities each day.

Outside of education and work, Alex enjoys using this software to illustrate characters mostly associated with film, animation and video games he enjoys. Doing so inspires him towards graphic design, as he hopes to contribute in those fields of expertise someday. Though he is just starting out, he is eager to see where his path in life will go.