Zoey August Pratt
From drafts till drawn– introducing Zoey Pratt
Oscillating between the frames of illustration and film in this artist’s creative practice
Artist self portrait
Digital
2048 × 2048 px resolution
2025
Picture this– a homeschool in a rural Napa Valley scape, redwood trees and building forts. If you couldn’t, our artist today could likely draw you a scene or make a movie out of it, owing it to the inspiration such a backdrop becomes in her work as her hometown. Zoey August Pratt is a senior at Parsons School of Design studying Illustration, shaping the new age of children’s books and animation with zealous relish.
Pratt chiefly makes her work using digital tools like Procreate and an iPad, and occasionally traditional media like watercolours and oils. Her style features stylistically rounded, doe-eyed and realistically highlighted renderings of the human form, palatable to both children and adults. Heavy line weight, shading and poignant expressions give her characters a spark that breathes life into the stories she enjoys crafting from scratch— an interest emanating from her love for movies and narrative media in general.
Conceptually, fictional themes like horror and fantasy are evergreen in Pratt’s work, with her film minor at Parsons enabling her to connect with works (and even people) that help her foster narratives for her projects. Her penchant for creative writing and making picture books was cultivated in ‘a dome home with twenty other kids’ where hours of the week were invested in making original projects and collaborative art.
The Cave is Hungry
Digital
2752 × 2064 px resolution
2025
“I definitely take a lot of inspiration from the people and things around me. Like, take it all and just put it into my art.” she explains.
For Pratt, her Californian upbringing and family have been longstanding themes in her work, inspiring elements ranging from environments to characters, storylines for her work and even the nature of her work altogether. Whether it was drafting a hundred and eighty page graphic novels together with her friends as an adolescent or babysitting her ten year old sister Maude who grew up before her eyes, each work Pratt creates is a testament to the panoramas that have unfolded before her own eyes.
Her children’s book ‘The Maudster’ looks to little Maude as a muse. Additionally, the protagonist of her thesis animatic ‘Odd May’ is inspired by her sister (with Odd May being pig-latin for Maude), as well as by the picture book and movie Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendack.
The Maudster
Digital
20 × 10 inches
2025
Being a film geek, Pratt attributes great value to the narrative novelty of film media, especially in the way that it informs her illustrated practice.
“It’s easy to take a film and develop your characters, script and see it visually without drawing it at first.” she says.
Galactic Trippin’
Digital
2064 × 2752 px resolution
2025
Keen to follow a career where all the elements of her interests and inspiration converge, Pratt is pursuing the children’s cartoon and animated media industry. Through the pilot episode of Odd May that she’s animating in her last year at Parsons, Pratt aims to channel her love for visual narratives and character development into kid-favourite, world building projects.
She conveys, “I want to produce something that makes kids want to go have fun outside.”
Frog Prince
Digital
2064 × 2752 px resolution
2025
