Land of Kaixin by Kaixin Wang

Land of Kaixin Kaixin Wang

CONTACT: kwang01@mica.edu 312.889.4142

Land of Kaixin A G u id e t o K aix in Wan g ’ s Th e sis Proje c t

MICA MFA ILLUSTRATION PRACTICE 2017-2018 © Kaixin Wang, 2018

CONTENTS

01- Inspiration & Visual Reference

02- Storyboard

03- Puppet Making

04- Start Making Animation!

05- Thesis Show & Gallery Talk

06- Beyond

07- Acknowledgment

INTRODUCTION

Hi, I am Kaixin. I am an illustrator, artist and book designer. In 2011 I received my undergraduate degree in environment design from Zhejiang University of Technology. The work experience in an architecture company made me realized that what I really want to do is illustration. I believe something that stays in your mind will someday spring up in your life. So I taught myself drawing in undergraduate, and I found the door to illustration opening for me. I worked as a freelancer with some artists in an illustration studio after graduation. However, I had begun to feel stuck. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been focused on drawing skills for a long time and could not find my own voice as an artist. In the fall of 2016 I began my graduate school at MICA.

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Studying illustration in MICA reinvented my thinking of art in many ways. The abundant hand making workshops in the first year helped me explore more in interactive forms. I made a double side tunnel book, a fabric childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s picture book, and a sand stop-motion animation with a partner, and so on. I enjoyed these handmade workshops, and gradually found my own voice as an illustrator.

INSPIRATION & VISUAL REFERENCE

When I started to think about what I want to do for my thesis project, I reviewed all the projects I did in the past two years, then decided to return to the theme that has been important to me all the time. The theme is the relationship between an individual's inside world and that personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s larger environment. At the very beginning, I was planning to make an artist book about childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s secrets. But after more thought, I turned to stop-motion animation. Further more, I wanted to challenge myself to do something no one did before, and I was also not sure if it would turn out good. I wanted to use different media to draw the boring city life and colorful fantasy world. So I decided to use oil paint on glass to show the black and white part, and spray painted 3D objects to show the colorful fantasy world. My thesis project developed from a 2-minitue stop motion animation I did in animation class, and my self-directed project at the end of the first year. Both of them are about the contrast between the adults and kids, and the loneliness issue in a big city. Here are some of my visual references. For the black and white part, I was planning to make it with Charcoal, like William Kentridge. But I turned to oil paint on glass. I like how dark it can be and it is easy to wipe it every frame. For the colorful fantasy world, I learned from Paul Gauguinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings and some independent animations. I was careful about planning the visual result.

STORYBOARD

I started my thesis project with story board sketching. It took me almost one semester to figure out the storyboard. At the beginning I wanted to draw a story about an office worker, but when the content grew and narration issues happened, I lost my direction in resolving problems. I struggled but finally decided to make the story as simple as possible, and leave some imagination space for viewers. Finally, my story is about an office worker whose day is profoundly affected by a little child during his morning commute. Is his experience real or is it a fantasy? No matter where we live, or what kind of job we have, my wish for everyone is to protect their childlike heart. Another interesting aim I set for myself was to find the specific tempo of animation. Because from my observation, tempo is the most important thing in animation, and really makes a story charming. I worked with a composer, Jason. After we discussed the tempo, I am satisfied that his background music design really helps the narrative develop.

PUPPET MAKING

I had some puppet making experience before. There are several main challenges in the process of puppet making. One of the challenge for this time is I have to make the hair look nice, because it needs to flow in the air. I was also careful about make the skeleton slim. I had some problems with making the hands. Because building the hands with wires made the hand shape hard to control. Whitney and I even thought about buying a Ken doll online instead of making the puppet on my own. But we decided to make the hands with sculpey instead of wire and liquid latex, since the fingers donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to move in the animation. To sew the clothes for the puppet was another problem for me. I checked out some books about clothes samples and watched some teaching video on youtube. I made the suit coat more than twice, but I got a strong sense of accomplishment when I took a photo of them standing on my desk.

START MAKING ANIMATION! Although I did some gifs and short animations before, animation is still a new field for me and I love to challenge myself. Another challenge for me is, it is different from my previous projects because it is long-term, almost seven months, and it is easy to lose interest when I see the same pictures everyday. So I learned how to work on a long time project, which I have never done before, like how to find a balance between consistently working on repetitive drawings and finding new fresh excitement point. I started with shooting the ending part of my animation. I enjoyed playing with oil paint on glass. And I learned how to combine multiple layers of drawing in after effects.

These are the city buildings in my animation. I was planning to make them from cardboard, but it is really time consuming and hard to make it nice. The buildings in my animation are curved like flame and the edge of cardboard is not smooth. So I changed to laser cutting and spray painted them. It turned out better.

I drew the illustration of the city view in my animation (on last page) before I started making these laser cutting objects, because I want to have an overall sense of the shape and color.

THE FINAL EXHIBIT & CALLERY TALK Having worked on animation throughout the year, I was completely flustered when it came time to think about installation for the thesis show. My main concern with exhibiting the work was to be able to translate the artwork inside the animation and my illustrations into a space.

Installing my own exhibition is hard but satisfying. With the help from first years and my peers, I finally did it. I was planning to hang an umbrellea in the center ceiling of my exhibition space, and make a rainbow light coming from it. But when I started installing I realized it is too hard to make it come true. So I give up this idea and just focus on exhibiting my animation.

There are

three digital drawings about the fantasy world on the train in my exhibi-

tion. I like the screen print texture, so I created these two images in 3 colors to mimic the screen print style. This one is the background image in my animation. I combined traditional media with digital drawing, some part is acrylic on art paper, some is texture brush in photoshop.

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BEYOND

I think I will keep exploring making art about this theme in different ways, maybe more handmade books, or print making, or other narrative forms like comics and graphic novels. Because it is the topic I feel most familiar with and it just comes out naturally. So this thesis project is reminding me what I have already learned in this area, and what else I can dig into this topic. Just for example, I like Chris Ware’s graphic novel, and some of his stories are also about the loneliness in city life. But the way he tells the story is, astonishing,shocking, and in a different perspective compared with mine. I would love to be out of my comfort zone and observe the society in a different perspective. I’m also interested in making art about other topics. Recently I have new ideas about animation. One of them is I want to abandon all the complicated materials but just use one, like watercolor or pencil, to tell a story. There’s many things I want to do in the future. Print making, artist book, children’s picture book, also animation and so on. I know I can’t have that much energy to do everything, so I might focus on artist’s book and children’s picture book.

In the future, I am planning to get a teacher job and have a risograph print studio with my friend in China. With a teacher job I can have stable salary;with our print studio I can keep making artist’s book and zines, also earn money from it. No matter what I am going to do in the future, my only wish is to keep drawing happily.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This book marks the end of my time as a student at MICA ILP. I am so grateful to the many people who helped me to grow while here in Baltimore. Thank you to the ILP family. The variety community creates an energetic environment full of inspirations which push me to work harder. I still feel lucky to have been chosen to be a part of this program, and to have worked closely with both of you. My eternal gratitude goes out to Whitney Sherman and Kimberly Hall for their guidance, patience and encouragement over the past two years. None of this works would have been possible without other MICA faculty who have helped shape my experience here in the most positive and challenging way: Heidi Younger, Sarah Mcneil, Shadra Strickland, Abraham Burickson, Stephanie Garmey and Kat Navarro. Thanks also to all the guest critics who provided valuable feedbak on my progress at every stage. Finally to my parents, for boundless love, support and strength.