cchung's blog

Since last week, I just focused on drawing/inking/coloring the illustrations, so there is not much to talk about. I decided to color only the main character to emphasize him. Also, this makes sense because he is supposed to be the one who fights back the monster which represents the darkness and lack of inspiration. I thought that coloring only the hero would show the contrast between him and the monster, which is drawn with black pen. The hero’s weapon, art, is also represented in colors. As the colorful swirl comes out of the brush, it covers the monsters body with its colors.

After thinking about it, I decided to add more illustrations to make the story flow more smoothly.

Now, my final project will be an installation piece of series of illustrations, read from left to right.

Since the number of illustration multiplied so much, I don’t think I’ll be coloring every single illustration due to the fact I only have less then 2 weeks to finish this. I’ll use colors on the panels where it is necessary to have colors to tell the story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJpXFUN_cYc&feature=youtu.be

During the last week of the class, we went out for our self-field trip to do whatever research/practice needed for our final project. Since I needed to interview students of Massart to create imagery of the monster in my drawings.

The questions I asked were:

• What is the monster you have to fight everyday as an artist?
• what to you fight for? What are you trying to achieve from creating art?

The first questions was conducted to find out how should I design the monster. Many people answered my question, but the most frequent answer I got  were sleepiness, art block or getting inspiration, and the unknown future (it is hard to become a ‘big shot’ in art world). So I tried to find one image to summarize these monsters, and the final answer I got was ‘darkness.’ You get sleepy when it’s dark; not knowing what to draw or create is kind of like being unable to see what is inside yourself; and not knowing the future and having concernes about it is like walking in darkness without any guide. So therefore, the image I will give to my monster is darkness.

The second question was asked to figure out what is the image of the prize/honor/love interest that the hero finds after his battle with the monster. Most people I interviewed said that the reason they fight their monster is to create an art and express themselves. Their love for art is the reason they fight. And when they win the battle, they get the satisfaction from their finished works. Therefore, I thought the prize that the hero gets in my myth of massart should be a love interest then a money or honor. Also, I think that in my mythology, the love interest may should be in same gender as the hero. Because: First, homosexuality and same sex marriage is one of the issues we have in modern society and many students in Massart is interested and supporting it. Ancient mythologies mostly talks about how the heroes rescue princess, but it never talks about a couple with same gender (except for the Greek mythology, where these lovers always end up with a tragic ending.) Second, many people I interviewed answered that the reason they make art is to express themselves and take out what’s inside their mind. Therefor I thought it would be a better representation if the person the hero rescues is in same gender as the hero as a the other self.

Now I have a clear plan for my project. My idea for the final project was to create a series of illustrations that shows the mythologies from all over the world that has similar themes, symbols and ect. But because I didn’t want to directly illustrate the mythologies, I had to motify my idea.

Therefore, now the new idea I have for my final project is to create a new mythology of the modern society that has the pattern that is found in the mythologies of different cultures of the world.

So the pattern I found was:

1. Heroes have unusual birth. (ex> Momotaro, Heracles, Park Hyuk-Gue-Se)
2. Heroes receives significant object before they go for their adventures. (ex> Momotaro’s Kibidango, Theseus’s shoes and ball of yarn, Perseus’s winged shoes and Athena’s shield ect)
3. Defeat the monsters.
4. Get wealth/fame/honor/Princess.
5. Happy ending vs. bad ending. (Perseus and Odysseus had happy endings, but Jason, Oedipus, and Bellerophon had bad endings, despite the fact that they all had to go through the first 4 steps very similarly.)

So now, I am going to apply this rules to my hero.

Before I start, I want to think about the message of my myth. Mythology is usually a metaphor of a issues in reality (ex> the sea monster that Odysseus had to fight was a metaphor for the dangerous tide and conditions of that part of the ocean.). So, that is the moster my hero has to fight?

Also, who is my hero? I decided to let my hero represent the life of art students. The monster he has to fight is the problems and fears that the artists has to fight, and the special gift that the hero receives will be the creativity amd the media the artists use, becuse creating art is our method of fighting our problems(monsters).

One of the method of modern story telling is through comic. Comic books are our own mythology of the modern society in a sense. Therefore, I want to create my illustrations with ink pen, like the comic book artists usually do. (but my illustrations won’t be like a page of a comic book. It will be a series of scenes)

For my in class field trip, I want to interview some Massart students so I can decide the form of the monster. What are we, the artists, fighting? and what are we fighting for?

I am very interested in mythology all over the world. The ones I am particularly interested in are Greek and Korean mythology, While I was reading many books about those mythology, I found many similarities throughout the mythologies of these culture. Being a trilingual, finding links between cultures of different countries always interests me. Therefore, for my final Time Project, I decided to focus on these similarities in mythologies.

Q1: which mythes?

I am most familiar with Greek and Korean mythologies. Also, Those two can be considered as root of my own culture, since I was born in Korea, but living in America (majority of Americans have their roots in European countries, whom the Greek mythology is in base of their culture).

Q2: Which themes?

List of similarities I found in both culture’s mythology:

• Significance of shoes: Story of Theseus, Jason, Prince Yuri, Cinderella, and Kong-Gee & Pat-Gee)
• Sun and Moon are sibling in both culture’s myth
• Unusual birth of children who becomes heroes (Heracles and Park Huk Gue Se
• Husbands who’s faces are unseen (Eros and Gyun Huen)

Q3: Method?

I would like to work on series of drawings inspired by the themes above that links the mythologies of different cultures. In terms of materials, I am most familial with digital illustration.

to be updated later

Moulin Rouge – Elephant love medley

Moulin Rouge is one of my favorite film. I love the songs, actors and costumes, but the way it was filmed is also gorgeous. The part I choose to analyze is my favorite scene, “Elephant Love Medley”, where Christian confess his love to Satine. The scene uses a lot of cuts for its transition. It shows Christian and Satine simultaneously in different angles and distance, using subject to subject and aspect to aspect transitions, create a very much of movement although the characters are mostly staying on the top of the Elephant Room. My favorite moment in this scene is when Christian steps up onto the head of the Elephant Room(2:00), and the camera goes around to film him in almost 90 degrees around. This also happens at the moment when the two start singing together in the room (3:30). The camera goes around in 360 in circle while the background behind the characters dissolves into magical looking starry scene and dissolves back to the scene of the room. The movie uses this method a lot, where the camera  moves to follows the character as the character moves within the scene, or to show the character in different angles and distance. Also, at the end of the clip (4:23) they use wipe method with the windmill to change the scene to where the narrator(?) of the movie sings in the same place, but different time and mode. In Moulin Rouge, they often use this wipe method to move from past to present in same place since the movie moves along while Christian is looking back on past when Satine and he were together.

To begin with the project, I started with deciding the topic/person that I want to work with. To be honest, video is not my most strongest nor my favorite medium to work with, so I think it would be a good idea to work on a person I know a lot and I am interested in. The first person I chose was Hideki Anno, the director of Evangelion series. Because I recently read an article about Anno and his works, I thought It would be fun to work on this topic. But as I began to brainstorm with the story line, I realized that this is a very hard topic to work with; first, I do not know Anno in person, so the only thing I can talk about is his anime, but then it wouldn’t be ‘his portrait.’ So the next and final topic I thought about is my friend, Cyan. So I cleared my thoughts and came up with the story line.

Then I started to work on the storyboard, following the story line I came up with. Because my storyline was very detailed, it was pretty easy to make a storyboard. I decided what kind of videos/pictures I will put in each part of the story at this step.

Then I made a list of videos, pictures, and drawings I need for the project, just to make my job easier. Then I started collecting the elements I need. I went out to take some pictures and videos, I drew the drawings I needed. Then I decided what kind of music I will use as the background music. I choose a OST from an anime that Cyan and I both like. Then following the storyboard and the rhythm of the music, I finished my project using the Premiere Pro.