Concept theme

After exploring the Themes in Art for a week I thought about what I wanted to do, I came to a conclusion of “Visual Delight and The Arts of Daily Life”, but I couldn't think of anything that I really wanted to do that would complete this theme while doing what I wanted. Then after going through everything once again I finally settled on “Stories and History”, because I was going to model a character and relate her to the theme of stories and history, but mostly the stories and folklore part.

I want to mostly focus on Eastern Folktale or stories I’ve been exposed to since I was younger. Although Western stories have their own charm to it. I feel like I can have a personal connection to stories I’ve grown up with and the holidays I celebrate with. For my first project I wanted to base her off of a story that is famous in Chinese folktale, “Chang E” (嫦娥”). This story is usually told around Autumn for the Chinese Autumn festival where families would tell stories and eat mooncakes with their children. I’ve always been interested in Asian stories such as White Snake, Hachishakusama, and Momotaro they’re all stories that I would love to hear talked about more here and made into movies and other content for people to consume.

I currently have a Dell laptop and it isn’t the best for running blender or any face-tracking program. So I would love to take the opportunity during class to make something relevant and I can use beyond just the course. I have wanted to 3D model a character since middle school. I love the idea of being a totally different character in front of an audience, but going on stage seems too scary for me. Once I found out about the entire community of 3D modeling and character creating I wanted to do one. Designing characters and incorporating little things such as clothes or accessories to their outfits are very necessary to their personality and appearance. I’ve been on Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and more watching people make their characters and requesting artists for thousands of dollars to draw or model their characters. I was thinking I do not have thousands of dollars lying around, but I do have the ability to learn skills and I already know how to 3D model meshes and everything that is related to making a character in Blender so why not test it out? For my character, she will be wearing clothes from the Ming Dynasty in China since that was when the story originated from, but the twist is that her clothes have designs of the sky and bunnies to symbolize the other parts of the stories and multiple stories that co-exist around hers. Her hair will be more modern, but her color scheme will be very earth green to contrast her more celestial side for being a goddess. Maybe, if I have time I might make her another outfit, but I’m expecting this project to go at least for half of the year. I have so many more ideas when it comes to her backstory, relations to the Jade rabbit (which is another Chinese folklore), small details such as accessories, and textures for her eyes and body! I’m looking forward to seeing my idea come to life with this project this year and I hope I can make her a good one.