Saturday, July 31, 2010

Kaiko - Sea of Clouds


I originally posted this on DA with a bad resolution and saturation. This is a better resolution and soon, DA should have the same quality for those who follow me there.

This was a class piece I did in 2009 that I had fun doing with mostly complimentary colors of oranges and blues inspired by a European animated movie called, Nocturne. I can't remember the exact purpose of this project, but I do recall the course required a person to pick a phrase out of the list of words mentioned in the professor's sheet to create an illustration. Mine was 'Sea of Clouds'. This led me to create Kaiko, the flying fish soaring through a 'sea of clouds'. Kaiko is a creature mixed of an array of fish, bird, and water mammal such as an orca, shark, gold fish, flying fish, and the cockatiel parrot. The fish's name means, Sea Child. I chose the reading of Kaiko instead of Umiko, which people may misread on its name tag, which has duel pronunciation in Japanese's kanji. Why? Umiko sounded too girly and possibly common since Umi is a well known girl name, where as the sharp strike of the word 'Kai' with the soft 'Ko' felt more pleasing to me. It also had a tomboy ring to it since Kai is a boy name, with the softness of Ko which is a girl ending for names. I could be wrong, but at the very least, I liked the sound. For those who know about the popularity of Japanese names, do correct me if I am wrong. I love the concept of making names and learning languages. It's really fascinating!

Illustration by: J.S. Choi (C) DO NOT USE!!
Media: Pencil, Watercolor, and Gouache

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