I'm going to create a one-shot illustration that tells the "whole story" in one shot. The folk tale I chose was called "The Two Travellers" and tells a story about "The good that comes with you". A good man and a bad man travel together, the good man gives his food to the bad man, and the bad man gouges out the good man's eyes when he has no food and leaves him in wilderness to die. The good man heard two birds on a branch talking about the dew that could heal the eyes and the flowers that could heal the princess. The good man finally cured his eyes and married the princess through these messages, while the bad man who tried to listen to the bird talk for profit was pecked out of his eyes by the birds. This is a very instructive story, and the author's writing is very succinct. He does not describe the dialogue and scenes vividly, but tells the story in a straightforward way from a third perspective. I looked up some sources and found many versions of the story, and the one that stuck with me was the religious one. In this version, the good man believes in God, the tree on which the bird rests becomes a cross, and the meaning of the story becomes that believers will be rewarded if they follow the dogma.
I hope to use symbolic symbols to create illustrations about this story, because I think the focus of this story lies in its meaning rather than what kind of scene it depicts. Its scenes and characters are very general. In addition, according to my understanding of this story, there are no pure good people and bad people in this world, and more people are making a choice between the good side and the evil side in their hearts. If the evil side defeats the good side and makes people do bad things, people will actually hurt themselves in the end. I hope that after reading this story, people will not blame the bad guys and praise the good guys, but reflect on themselves. So in my illustrations, I represent the conflict between good and evil as a struggle within a person. I will use the composition of opposites and contrary to express this kind of struggle, and show the theme of "what goes around comes around".
In my illustration, the bad guy looks the same as the good guy. The bad guy stabbed the good guy in the eye with her sword, but stabbed herself in the eye after penetrating the good guy. This reflects the concept of "harm set, harm get." And their identical appearance represents that they are actually two sides of the same person. Don't let the evil side go unrestrained, or it will come back to bite you in the end. In addition, in order to better fit the original folk tale, I added many symbols, such as crosses, food, flowers, crows, angels and demons. These symbols can also help me better metaphorize the concepts I want to express.