Elphi – MOODBOARD: Desert Dragon

  1. Beginning: Our mind map, with focused points highlighted

2. Write up and Inspiration

One thing that came to our minds while we were discussing different concepts was the idea of dragons that are very often used in Chinese folklore that both of us were extremely familiar with. Growing up listening to tales of flying dragons inspired us to materialise and make tangible what we think dragons look like, based on the stories that we grew up listening to, as well as our own imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dragons have served to be a source of guidance and hope in Chinese folklore and even in modern-day stories as well. In the Chinese folklore, The Four Dragons, four dragons bring water to the desperate villagers in China, and ultimately selflessly transform themselves into the four winding rivers of China. In this folklore, not only do the dragons provide water for the villagers, but they also become the resource itself – the rivers – that act as life-giving and guiding sources for the Chinese. Similarly, Mushu in the movie Mulan acts as a form of guidance and protection for the protagonist throughout the film. We want to tie this in with this year’s theme of the “Silk Road” by combining elements of the dragon and the silk road together. We want to bring forth the idea of the dragon as a source of guidance and resource for merchants during their journey on the silk road, as well as the idea of the long and winding body of the dragon resembling the winding paths of the silk road.

 

While doing some research on how dragons look and the way they move, we realised that each artist has their own individual take on these magical creatures, hence we decided to take on the challenge of creating a new image for dragons to pay homage to what the creature stands for. 

 

What we want to focus on for this project is not on how the dragon looks like as a whole, but instead we want to focus on what it represents and what we find the most intriguing about these magical creatures, while holding on to the element of mystery. Hence, we decided to focus on the unique texture and movement of a dragon for this particular project, as it is simple yet captivating.

3. Artist Reference

A simple inspiration board created with photos from Pinterest.


A gif from the inspiration board

4. Methods and Techniques
  • We want to focus on one or two colours and the experimentation of its tones. Here are the colours and shades we will be experimenting with.

  • We want to focus on keeping the video monochrome with some sand shades.
  • We also want to focus on the organised movement of Geometric shapes (as seen from our inspiration board)
  • Tools we want to use:
    – After effects
    – Illustrator
    – Cinema 4D
  • We are also considering overlaying sandy/grainy textures over our videos.
5. Individual Timeline (As of now)