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Wally and Boat

2018



 

Wally and Boat is an absurd tragedy about desire. There is no age limit for the readers. The whale never cares about what he eats until he has eaten up all the creatures. One day, he met a boat and fell in love with it. To show his love, he vomited all he ate before to the boat. When he was netted, he thought that he had some hopes. On the contrary, he was cruelly processed to canned food. My inspiration comes from The Besieged City, a satirical novel by Zhongshu Qian. After reading the book, I summarized the central idea as what you can’t get is always in a commotion, and what you favored has no fear. In fact, what I tried to express is the strong desire that can’t be described. The reason why I selected a whale as my protagonist is due to the dialog deciding the fate of the protagonist in The Besieged City. It seems that he teased the heroine as he said “the boat is only as big as the whale’s crevice”. But it is also the beginning of his tragedy of entering the “besiege city”. During my work, I was never restrained to the biological image of a whale and I designed it as if it had only a head. By weakening the tail and exaggerating the mouth and head, such a way may better reflect the heartless characteristics of the whale. I also highlighted its behavior of eating. In addition, due to the aesthetic sense, this illustration can make the whale have a big contrast with other creatures. Since I appreciate the style of Mark Rothko, I designed the ocean with the color of pink to highlight the contrast with the fierce behavior and created a surreal atmosphere. Like a curtain, the unique color block can give the audience more freedom of imagination in time and space. I took the Oriental visual way of viewing and used the scattered composition to make the story appear on the stage like a drama.