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Draft Illustrations of Chinese Fairy Tales p.1

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Draft Illustrations of Chinese Fairy Tales p.1

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I began to experiment with illustrating Chinese fairytales I found online. I first explored how I would depict the story if I only had the use of one panel. This was challenging but it helped me understand how I would illustrate each story. Restricting myself with one panel to start with allowed me to decide whether the story had enough to it to be illustrated in three-four panels. After completing one panel that represented a major point in the story, I then thought about how I would depict the other panels, and whether or not I would be able to compress the general idea of the story into only three-four panels. For this page I liked the story of the Raven and the Fox as the story was interesting and the characters were very contrasting in temperament, making them easier to illustrate.

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Draft Illustrations of Chinese Fairy Tales p.2

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Draft Illustrations of Chinese Fairy Tales p.2

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Here I did the same for two other stories, creating a single illustration to summarise  the researched story. I found two stories that I felt were long enough to illustrate and experimented by creating a single picture to illustrate a key part of the story.

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Research and Illustrations of Chinese Mythical Creatures

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Research and Illustrations of Chinese Mythical Creatures

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I researched mythical creature that are commonly found in Chinese fantasy stories and mythology. This research helped me to understand the culture behind such myths and stories better, as what the 'monsters' represent can say a lot about the values and morals of the culture's society.

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Experimental Illustrations for Chinese Fairy Tales p.1

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Experimental Illustrations for Chinese Fairy Tales p.1

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Here I took the stories I had previously established in my 'Draft Illustration of Chinese Fairy Tales' pages, and tried to create three illustrations for each story. On this page I did the 'Fox and crow' and 'the Little Hunting Dog'. I felt that the 'LHD' story was too long, with too many key point in the story to be compressed into only three/four illustrations, so I decided not to use this one. The 'F and R' story was easier to compress into three cohesive illustrations, however I felt that the story was too simplistic and did not have enough for me to successfully make all three illustrations interesting and exciting.

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Experimental Illustrations for Chinese Fairy Tales p.2

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Experimental Illustrations for Chinese Fairy Tales p.2

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Here is the second page of my developed illustration ideas. Here I created three illustrations for 'The Four Dragons' and 'The Tiger and the Fox' stories. I felt both of these stories had enough key points to illustrate them effectively in three/four final illustrations. However I felt that the 'Four Dragons' story may have had too many points to summarise it into only three/four illustrations, it also involved too many characters to design.

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I began experimenting with the composition of my illustrations by considering angles and perspectives. This gave me an idea of how I could layout my final outcome. After exploring the compositions of the 'Four Dragons' story, I confirmed that it was too complicated and involved too many elements for me to effectively convey the story in only three/four panels. I found the most successful illustrations were the third 'Fox and Tiger' illustration on the first row, as I feel it makes the tiger appear intimidating as the fox cowers in the opposite corner. For the second row, i felt that the middle image was the most effective as the fear is evident in the random person we see in the left, which indicates the part of the story of the fox appearing to scare away the passers. For the third row, I feel the middle illustration was the most effective in conveying the tiger running away in fear from the fox, as it also mirrors the first panel I felt was most successful. I decided to create my final piece on the 'Tiger and Fox' story.

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On this page I explored how I could illustrate both the fox and tiger characters for my final piece. I experimented with different styles, from more detailed to more simplistic and from disproportionate to more accurate anatomy. I also explored the possibility of making the characters humanoid, with the characteristics and mannerisms of the animal they represent. I decided to take this human concept forward as I felt it would be easier to display emotions and actions using a human rather than an animal, as I have a better understanding of human anatomy and expressions. Here I experimented with colouring pencil on the designs to gain an understanding of what colours I could use for my final character designs. I found that colouring pencil was not a good medium to take forward as it left small white gaps that I felt were not good for my illustrations. I also decided that i would not use the grey colour scheme for the fox as it would be a very strong visual cue that the character is a fox, as fox's are not commonly associated with the colour grey.

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I used this page to test different design ideas for my fox character designs. I explored the use of different physical fox-like traits such as fox shaped eyes, elegant posture and thin features. I experimented with different ages, from an adult to a more child-like design. Alongside these fox-like characteristics I also wanted the character to be either a commoner or a young wealthy noble, in the end I decided to go for the latter. After completing these designs, I decided to take the first design as a reference for my final character design, as I felt it was the most fox-like adult character design.

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I used this page to trial character designs for the tiger, testing different clothing designs. My intention was to make this character appear to be a rogue cultivator or bandit. I feel I have achieved this as the characters design has sharper edges, such as the spiky hair and rough clothing, making him appear more aggressively and unfriendly than the fox character. I feel that design B was the most successful on this page, as it is the most aggressive looking design, which suits the mannerisms of a tiger. The design’s spiky hair and rebellious clothing make it a perfect reference for my final character design, however I will need to clearly communicate the designs correlation to the tiger. I will do this by adding more tiger stripes to the design and adding colour.

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I used this page to experiment with Guo Hua (Chinese paints). I found this medium very difficult to work with, despite appearing very similar to watercolour, this medium cannot be moved around easily after applied to paper like watercolours can. I also found the colours were very vibrant and hard to dilute. If I had the time I would have experimented further with this medium and would have possibly considered it as a means of presenting the final outcome. However due to time constraints and lack of experience with the medium, I was not able to practice Guo Hua as much as I would have liked.

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The Edited Story of The Fox and the Tiger to fit the Human Characters

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The Edited Story of The Fox and the Tiger to fit the Human Characters

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Once a young nobleman (fox) accidentally bumped into a rogue cultivator (tiger). The latter bared his teeth, unsheathed his hunter's dagger, and was about to attack and relieve the nobleman of all his riches. But the nobleman spoke and said: “My dear sir, you must not think that you are the only powerful cultivator. Your level of cultivation does not compare with my own. My reputation is far superior to yours. Let us walk together, and do you keep behind me. And if men catch sight of me and do not fear me, then you may take all the riches I currently hold.” The rogue cultivator was willing, and so the nobleman led him along a broad highway. But the travelers, when they saw the rogue cultivator in the distance, were all terrified and ran away.

Then the nobleman said: “How about it? I went in advance, and the men saw me and had not as yet seen you.”

And thereupon the rogue drew back, quivered and cowered in fear and ran away himself.

The rogue cultivator had remarked quite well that the men were afraid of the nobleman, but he had not noticed that the nobleman had borrowed the terror he inspired from him.

Reference:
Fairytalez (2015) The Fox and The Tiger Available at: https://fairytalez.com/fox-tiger/

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Here is the final character design for my fox character  that I will be using in my final outcome. I have taken into consideration how to make the character appear fox like in a way that will be clearly communicated to the viewer. As such I have given the character a hairstyle that mirrors the appearance of a fox’s tail and the pupils in his eyes are slits like that of a fox’s. He wears a gown that is simple but elegant and high class looking, this is to help imply that this character is a noble or at least not poor, making it clear why the bandit tiger character would think to attack and rob him. I made the base colour of the design black and white with hints of orange. Due to the similarity in colours schemes of a fox and tiger, they are both predominantly orange, I decided to base the fox design off of a cross fox. A cross fox is cross between a common red fox and a silver fox, whose fur coat is predominantly black and orange. For the final I had to tweak this design as I was given feedback that the person did not immediately associate the character with a fox. To address this, I tweaked the design so that the character had an orange ponytail instead of a black one.

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This is the final design for my tiger character that I will be using in my final illustrations. I added a bright orange coat with tiger stripes to his design to make his association to a tiger much clearer. He has kept his sharp appearance, as his hair is spiky and appears unkempt, making him seem unruly and undisciplined, which suggests he is a bandit or someone who is dangerous and aggressive. The tiger character remained the same for my final outcome, keeping all aspects of this final character design.

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I completed some pencil sketches of environments, to give myself an idea of what kind of setting I wanted to place my characters in. I ended up going for a setting closest to the first sketch depicted on this page. When I created these background, I used photos as references and took inspiration for prior research I had done on traditional chinese art (Guo Hua and Shan Shui), as many pieces depict landscapes in ancient china.

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This is the Initial Sketch for the first of my three final Illustrations. The bamboo seen in the back of the image changed when I moved onto inking, and I also added a more detailed background for the picture, which included a field landscape, mountains and a red Siheyuan (traditional Chinese house) style building in the top right hand corner.

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Here is the first illustration fully inked with black outliner. I chose to outline my pieces in black as I felt it would mirror the Chinese Gongbi style, which I researched as part of my Chinese painting research. This style has been known to use bold outlines, in its precise and tidy style. I feel I achieved this by using the black fine liner to create a solid outline for my work.

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This is the completed first final illustration fully coloured. I used Sharpie and alcohol markers to colour this piece, which I felt worked well as it has given the piece a bright and colourful appearance which will makes it eye catching and hard to miss if viewed in a gallery. The image depicts the first part of the 'Fox and Tiger' story, in which the tiger is about to eat the fox. However in my human reproduction of this story, the tale is slightly different in that the 'tiger' wants to attack and rob the 'fox'. This is what this illustration shows, the 'tiger' threatening the 'fox', whilst the fox puts his hand out in protest trying to convince the fox not to hurt him. I believe the composition of this piece really encapsulates the idea that the 'tiger' is intimidating the 'fox'. There is also a discarded coin purse that has fallen open near the 'fox's left hand, suggesting the 'tiger's intention is to steal the 'fox's money. I took inspiration from the Shan Shui style for the background, as I made the perspective similar to the perspective seen in such shan shui artworks.

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Due to the streaks that appeared on my final due to the pens I used, I decided to take my pieces into photoshop to edit them. I selected the areas I wanted to smooth out using the wand tool and then went to 'filter', 'blur' and then selected 'motion blur'. This softened up the texture of the pen slightly, removing some of the roughness caused by the pens. I also tried out 'gaussian blur' which was a more rounded blur than 'motion blur', as it did not create a soften streak texture to suggest movement. Ultimately I chose to use the 'motion blur' as I felt it was most effective is smoothing out the pen marks.

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Here is the initial sketch for the second of my three final illustrations. It has the background and characters all prepared for inking.

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This is the second final ilustration fully inked and ready for colour.

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Here is the completed second illustration fully coloured. Due to the large area of green landscape in this piece, it appears slightly streaky on the paper. However due to the nature of Sharpie pens and alcohol markers this is a trait that is unavoidable. I don not feel that this distracts or tarnishes the illustration beyond repair and believe that despite this, this is a successful final piece. I added a layer of foreground to make it appear as though the characters have travelled a distance since the first illustration. This image is displaying the part of the 'Fox and Tiger' story where the fox tricks the tiger by offering to prove to the tiger that the fox is actually more powerful and scary. He does this by telling the tiger to follow behind him, if people run in fear at the sight of the fox, then clearly the fox is scarier than the tiger, and therefore the tiger must not eat the fox, so the tiger agrees, convinced that the fox will not win. In my retelling with human characters, this part of the story is slightly different, as this world I am depicting takes place in a Chinese fantasy world, the power system of supernatural cultivation is present. Hence in this story I have made it so that the 'tiger' character is a fearsome and powerful rogue cultivator and the 'fox' a weak yet cunning noble cultivator. So in my version, the 'fox' persuades the 'tiger' to let him prove to the 'tiger' he is a strong cultivator with a notorious reputation. If people run in fear at the sight of the 'fox' then clearly he is powerful and fearsome and the 'tiger' must leave him and no longer try to attack and rob him.

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I did the same experiment as I did for 'Digital Experiment One' exploring how I could soften out the streaky pen marks on my final piece.

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This is the third and last initial sketch of my three final illustrations for this project.

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This is the third and last inking of my three final illustrations.

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Here is the completed third and last illustration fully coloured. This image depicts the final part of the story, the tiger witnesses people running in fear from the fox's presence and is convinced of the fox's strength and flees in fear of the fox. However the tiger was tricked, he was what people really feared, walking closely behind the fox, it was the tiger that everyone fled from, not the fox. However my iteration of the story is slightly different. The 'tiger' sees people run in fear from the 'fox' and believes him to be a ruthless and infamous cultivator. However it is actually the 'tiger's notorious reputation that everyone knows and that is the reason they run as they see the 'tiger' following close behind the 'fox'. The 'tiger' then runs in fear of the 'fox', abandoning all hopes of stealing from the young noble 'fox'. Overall I feel that all my illustrations are successful as they clearly show the intended story in a bright, colourful and engaging way.

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I did the same experiment as I did for 'Digital Experiment One' exploring how I could soften out the streaky pen marks on my final piece.

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This is how the pictures would look if I chose to use a fill colour to completely remove all texture from the backgrounds of the piece. I felt this was not effective as it makes the image appear flat and lacks the original texture of the piece. I also feel the solid colours create a very distracting background due to how bold they appear.

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Here I created two initial exhibition designs, in which I would display my final outcome. The top one shows a simple design with boards to display my final pieces, I feel this would be effective with its bamboo design as it would not distract from the pieces which are small, and I feel increasing the sizes of the three illustrations would not be effective due to the streaky lines of the pen, which would become even more apparent in made bigger. Hence I would keep them as A4 for displaying. For this exhibition the pieces would have to be viewed from close up. The second design suggests creating enlarged cardboard cutouts of the each element of the illustrations and displaying them in a way that they must be viewed from far away, in order for the whole illustration to be in full display. However I have discarded this idea due to the reason mentioned prior, that the finals would change too much if made bigger. I decided to carry design number one forward as a final exhibition design.

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Here is my final exhibition design. It is a simple three board display. Each board would be made of shiny black stone, which appears to be a mimic black jade with green veins throughout. The main pieces will be placed central on all three of the black stone blocks. This simple and dark background would contrast with my vibrant final outcomes, making them stand out to viewers. This will be secured to the floor and ceiling by means of poles that look like bamboo which are Sacramento green in colour.