Can You Hear Me?

This picture is some old art I did to illustrate the hard science fiction short story "Hello, Hello" by Seanan McGuire from the short story series Future Visions. I came across my drawing again recently, and I still like it. So I wanted to put it up here before I go back to college in a few days. The short story is about a woman in computational linguistics who designs a language converter that uses avatars to bridge the gap, especially so that her deaf sister can talk normally to people without them knowing. So she uses sign language, and the computer avatar talks out loud on the other end. However, the woman's daughter begins to use the program to talk to someone different who is using the aunt's computer. And because of the system, the mom has no idea who it is. It's incredibly well written, and I won't spoil the twist here. But I really liked it. So I drew one idea of what it would be like here. 

It's my old style of drawing with no pupils, and it's clear I still need to practice drawing hair. It's just so weird to practice, though. The woman has the short, choppy, shoulder length hair I usually default to. Though for the daughter's hair I did try to capture the kind of stringy, all-over the place look of a girl her age. I added a few futuristic touches to the clothes and computer table. For example, the pattern on the mom's shirt is based on the patterns of "spray-on clothes" I've only seen videos of. But the biggest future touch was artistic license. Reading the short story, it seems like the avatar is definitely not a hologram, but I wanted to show it from the back to give the audience that uncertain feeling. For the avatar's head, I tried to kind of duplicate the too-perfect odd-looking shape of a CGI person like in Tron Legacy. Not sure how well I succeeded, which probably means I didn't. I still like it. Mostly, I just like the difference in expression between the mom and daughter. God is good.