After reading the article How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, I wrote down some key points that came up more often. I started off my brainstorm for an illustration for this piece by using those words or phrases to work off of. Some of the main things I wanted to sketch and figure out how to visualize was the “never-ending” to-do list, people feeling overwhelmed or burnt out, tasks piling up, and the burden of doing a simple task.
My first sketch that I went for was a person feeling overwhelmed and having all of these things hovering in the back of his mind that he has to remember. The tasks that were hovering around him were bigger tasks and didn’t really touch on the other smaller tasks that seem impossible to get done. My second sketch was a close up of the top of a to-do list. In the background the list goes on and on and tangles to show how long and infinite it seems. I liked this idea of the long twisting list, but it was also a bit general and not too expressive of the other things mentioned in the article. My third sketch is the one I went off of the most to achieve my final product. The girl holding up a large bag of things that are labeled “Things to get done,” gave a more burnt out look because she was also running on a treadmill. This was the sketch that I moved forward with.
Sketch 2 
Sketch 3 
Sketch 1
After receiving valuable feedback from my peers I decided to go with a different take to this final sketch. I still went with the sketch of the girl running on the treadmill, but played with the idea of her being like Atlas from greek mythology and holding up the world while she runs. I also wanted to incorporate the never ending long list of things to do so I had it wrapping around the world making it seem like an all consuming thing. My thought process with the world having mail and lists on it was that those seemingly easy to take care of things are not easy and they end up piling up until it feels like one is holding the weight of the world on their shoulders because things don’t get done. I made the figure and treadmill a less saturated color to give it the feeling of being burnt out while the rest of the colors were more vibrant and would catch the viewers’ eye a bit better.
Overall, I think my final product might give the viewer a good insight into what the article wants to express. I think by adding the world being carried by the girl, it creates a different take to the ideas I wanted to show from the article and that makes it more interesting and may be more compelling to the viewer. The character I created was mainly meant to show a burnt out person, but I tried making it more specific to millennial by changing up the shoes to a more popular brand. There is a lot going on in the top of the image and I think that adds to the heavy feeling of stress that is always weighing on people and millennials. The final product seems to have all the elements that I wanted to show from the key points I received from reading the article.
Sam here. Hey Lindsey, this is really fun illustration. Love the colors! Good job developing this from the sketch process to a more refined final. I almost think that the girl holding the world, with the orbiting to-do list, might work just fine on its own; perhaps the treadmill idea is a second hook that isn’t completely necessary (though a great idea). A way to think of it would be: how can I simply this even further and get the point across? Fun food for thought. Good job!