(DATABASE) Project 2 finals - jpg/png for sharing in class

Jinfeng Yang

The story I chose is "the two travellers". This story is also in my cultural history, reading the story from my own perspective, I would prefer to depict a moment before the turning point in the fate of these two people when their relationship was more like a pair of friends. Such a picture combined with the later changes in the relationship between the two, in my opinion, is very contrasting. My creative tool is procreate. I did not use any line drafts in the process of creating this illustration. Most of the content is expressed through free-style oil painting. I think this creative form is very interesting to me, and it is also a challenge.

Yejin Park

Just copy-pasting my description from before on The Bird Maiden:

At a human level, versions of the story often deal with the lot of a young woman who, far from home, has been trapped into a union through the strength and guile of a stranger. There is a kind of demand for the wife to be both bird (for this is what makes her otherwordly), and woman (which positions her as a potential wife). Migratory and trapped. That is her nature and fate - to be both and neither.

There are variations of the story in East Asia (varying origins) where the husband/father is taken to heaven, sometimes able to return to earth by gaining "heavenly favor". Sometimes not.

But there is almost always the inclusion of the bird-maiden regaining her robes and returning back to her home in one way or another.

Cranes are often employed as a motif of a symbolic link between heaven and earth, so perhaps the stories can not just be interpreted as a literal taking of the bird-maiden as a wife - but of a man's meddling with matters of life and death. If you were the bird-maiden, stripped of your wings, forced to wed the person who stole them, and who kept you tethered to earth...would you just accept fate? I like to think that sometimes she doesn't.

Hunter Chapman

For my project I chose the Urashima Taro story. I recall this tale from the recent Olympic website that google made where they had little 8bit games for the 2022 Japan olympics. This story was one of the mini games they chose to include and I found how dark this story is to be akin to tales like Brothers grim in Europe. The way the story just…ends on such a dark note is something interesting where in folk tales, they are meant to drill a distinct message into kids, but with age means bluntness. Nowadays retellers often fluff these stories up to be less dark for kids but I find the original tales more interesting. The multi-layered lessons taught in this story are very inspiring to draw from. 

For my spread I wanted to highlight as much of the setting and take as I could. I decided that the two different worlds of above the sea and under it are the two key settings, with the story focusing on the two characters with the gift being a focus as well. Some elements had to be left out like the kids beating up the turtle and Taro becoming old after opening the box. I am pretty happy with the result.

Yingyue Ma

I chose the story of Hansel and Gretel. I included the rabbit element in this illustration, and I wanted to adapt some of the darker parts of the story, so I turned the evil witch into the good fairy godmother. Then the story in my imagination will turn out like this：Hansel and Gretel came to the forest and found the house. The fairy godmother showed them around the house and invited them to have a delicious dinner together, and then they went home happily.

ZhengJi Zhang

I choose The Three Imposters, speaking of Imposter, one of the famous game pops up in my head, which is Among us. I choose to do all characters as Among us style, one is to make this project more fun to me and also can trying color easily due to the character design of Among us style. Pen and ink and also markers used in this drawing. 

Rita(Xiaoxia) Zhu

I chose the two travelers.

What I mainly want to express is the antagonistic relationship between the two protagonists in the story, good and evil, so I used black and white gray as the major color tone, and then in order to distinguish and strengthen the opposition, the good people used red embellishment, and the evil used dark green.

At the same time, the difference in the size of the characters also shows my personal view of justice and evil: justice will triumph over evil.

Anqi Cheng

I chose The Two Travelers. Although I couldn't really agree that we simply divide people in the world into good and bad but I guess the story could be effective in teaching kids about consequences, for it's the easiest for our brains to recoggnize simple labels. 

I was hoping to make the image more line-oriented but it became somewhat painterly 

Yusha Zheng

The story I chose is "Tattercoats". The image shows the gooseherd's hand holding the pipe. Tattercoats stands on it with the princess (as I personally do not favour a story with princes), followed by a line of geese. A castle floats at their destination. As the tale is a variant of the Cinderella theme, I referenced the palette of Disney's Cinderella for the princess and the castle. Perhaps this could be a story between Tattercoats and Cinderella (if she is born royal or becomes royal elseways).

Sho Ritco 

This piece is of The Emperor’s New Clothes. This story has been illustrated a ton, so I decided to have fun with mine and make the emperor into kind of a bara/bear pin up. Not that I’m into that. I just thought it would be a disservice to the story not to run with that, obviously it would be a missed opportunity and I’m all about giving the people what they want. Anyways, I spent most of my time on the people in the crowd and I’m not sure if spending most of my time on them was good time management or if I could have simplified them and saved myself the trouble. I do like how it turned out though.

Hunter Skuce

So, I did some research into Andersen and his process of using The Three Imposters to create The Emperor's New Clothes. Andersen made a very important change very very late in his writing process, where he switches the character of the brave peasant for that of a naive child- right as the book is being set up to print. He made this change in a reference to his own childhood, when he and his mother were at the side of the road waiting to see King Frederick IV's procession. When the King made his appearance Andersen cried out "oh, he's nothing more than a human being!" much to his mother's dismay. I really loved that line, and made it the crux of my piece. "Oh, he's nothing more than a human being" is a perfect summary for every version of this relic of a tale, and fits perfectly in an assignment meant to tell a story in one shot. That line says it all! 

Next I drew a figure wrapped in cloth, their hands, face, and hair fully rendered, with only the lace and lines of the fabric rendered. This draws attention to the humanity of the figure, and the unimportance of the cloth they're within. I also added an arrow piercing the figure's heart, as a more heavy handed reference of the fall from grace the king in The Three Imposters must have suffered when realizing he's one, naked in front of his court and public, and two, scammed out of riches and lied to by his trusted advisors. 

All in all, I wanted to depict The Three Imposters without depicting The Three Imposters and I am very happy with my result! I hope you are too:)