At our first discussion of the project, I came out with a brilliant idea about the National Service and terracotta warriors, as both of the terms are about soldiers. However, we found it is hard to find an item that is related to the terracotta warriors locally. After consulting with Ms. Sujatha, we went to the NUS Museum to look for a contemporary art piece in the Shards Gallery. During that trip, we went around the NUS Museum and a lot of items have caught our attention besides the Shards Gallery. In the end, after several discussions, we changed our scope and picked a terracotta figure and a painting for our response. However, after doing research, we found both of the two items are not from China, India or Japan. But luckily, we found another interesting item, the Vajradhara and Prajnaparamita Nepal in the Art Science Museum. We find that how normal people understand this piece is always totally different from its original meaning. Hence, we thought it is interesting to give the audiences a ‘surprise’ by telling them the real meaning of this artwork. At the same time, it is important to let them give up their misunderstanding towards Tantra Buddhism. After several discussions, we came out with the idea of making a censored motion poster of the yab-yum position with the truth covered under the black bar, and also a reaction video that features the point of views of the general public.

I am in-charge of the motion poster. The original idea was to find two actresses to act for this poster. However, due to the nudity, we were unable to such a pair of actresses. So as an alternative, I was trying to convert the object to pop-art style, as it might be as attractive to the audience as our original idea. Before starting, I did some research on pop arts and find that most of the pop art works contains vectors and vibrant complementary colors. So I decide to ‘vectorise’ the photo artwork with shapes of flat colors. It is a hard time for me to copy the sculpture onto illustrator using vectors and consider the color scheme at the same time. In the end, after several adjustments, I conformed the shapes and their colors, then I animated it using After Effects.

Working process for the motion poster

It is an interesting journey for me. By doing this project, got to know two of my amazing teammates – VAL and POOT better. I also learnt that it is important to understand the requirements of task better unless it is very easy to get lost – at first we did not realize that the objects must be from China, India or Japan and reconfirming the objects had taken us a lot of time. Also, I understand that it is important to make use of what we are good at when doing the teamwork and the importance of cooperation. And last but not least, I start to enjoy visiting the museum and study on the history of these objects.