Illustration For Designer: Applied Illustration (Research – 1) Ideas & Research

HELLO!!

For our new assignment 3, our brief would be  to choose a happy occasion or sad event and create a series of illustration based on that event.
Brainstorming on what event I should go with, Since I wanted to try some traditional chinese event. I immediately thought about the upcoming happy occasion that is happening in my family! and that would be my uncle’s upcoming wedding! YAYY!!!
Pretty quickly I decided to go with the event of “Betrothal Gift Ceremony” “过大礼” “guo da li”
Betrothal Gift Ceremony is a event that is performed by almost all the chinese dialect in Singapore as a compulsory custom whereby the groom would bring a set of “Gift” to the bride house for her, her parents and relatives. In return, the bride family would also prepare a set of “Gift” for the groom to bring back. 

Even though my uncle is hokkien (one of the chinese dialect group) but as a teochew myself I would really like to create a set of illustration that best reflect my traditional culture (as different dialect prepare different gifts). Based on my mother, in teochew culture the groom would have quite a number of items which part of it includes: (see the list on the right)

Since there are so many items that the teochew groom would have to prepare, I thought that it would really be fun to play around with the possibilities of these traditional items. After looking through the list, I have selected some unique items that differentiate the gifts from a teochew groom to groom from other dialects (see green words)
 

So some of the items I choose would be; 

Pig trotters Canned ( Gift for mother-in-law )

Charcoal ( Symbolize a good life after marriage for the bride )

Teochew Traditional Wedding Cakes ( Also call “五色糖 five color candy” Cakes given to the couple relatives.)

Four Piece Gold Jewelry ( Gift for the bride from the groom parents, to be worn on the wedding day)

Looking through at all these interesting items I decided that it would be fun to see what kind of new illustration style I could bring into these traditional gift, but at the same time I find it challenging because having to retain that unique traditional style without being too modern. as well as how I simplify the traditional pattern on the gifts boxes without making it too similar to the old pattern just without the “red”

Please take a look at my next post on my target audience and artist reference:):)

Published by

Leave a Reply