PROJECT EIGHTEEN

FMP ILLUSTRATION nick cave Stranger than kindness

Unit: Realisation and Dissemination

Final Major Project 2020 Michelle Yin

Introduction to 'Project Eighteen'

This project is about turning words into pictures, I was inspired by five written paragraphs in Nick Cave's book: 'Stranger Than Kindness'. These paragraphs mainly tells about the five stages of people's growth. I analysed those five paragraphs separately, and created five different styles of illustration.

This Project was my last self-initiated project during the time at school. It happened to be the eighteenth brief I committed since collage. In my country, the number eighteen represent "grown up". If a child reaches to the age eighteen means that he/she has the responsibility for the things they do and ready for entering society. Although I am no longer 18 years old, but the 18 project I have worked on represent my professional growth and progress, so I called it project eighteen because literally is my eighteenth project but also means my graduation from the creative school.

- Construct - Shattered - Introspect - Incubation - Reborn -

Chapter one : Construct

You are born. You build yourself piece by piece. You construct a narrative.

You become an individual, surrounding yourself with all that you love.

You are wounded too, sometimes, and left scarred.

Yet you become a heroic and unique embodiment of

both the things you cherish and the things that cause you pain.

As you grow into this living idea, you become instantly recognisable;

among the billions of faces in the world,

you become that which you think you are.

You stand before the world and say, ‘I am here and this is who I am.’

We are born differently, genes and cells define that each of us has unique personalities and ideas. However, we will go through a same process of finding our self to tell others this is who I am.

The tone of picture creates a cold mechanical feel, is filled with different elements. Some of the parts is the things I like and the things I do not like, also the things that are familiar and things that remain unknown.

Chapter Two: Shattered

But there is an influence at work. A veiled, magnetic force.

An unnamed yearning drawing you toward a seismic event;

it has always been there, patiently waiting.

This event holds within it a sudden and terrifying truth.

You were never the thing that you thought you were.

You are an illusion, as the event shatters you into a multitude of pieces.

Chapter Three：Introspect.

The pieces of you spin apart,

a million little histories,

propelling themselves away at a tremendous rate.

They become like the hurtling stars,

points of retreating light,

separated only by your roaring need and the distant sky itself.

My understanding of this text is that our shattered history have their own sense of independence and ego,

they become alive and controlling their own happiness.They exploring different things in different realms. In this case, the person who has broken means who is understanding the world in million of ways.

Chapter Four: Incubation

You scramble for the pieces of your shattered history.

There is a frantic gathering up.

You seize the unknowable fragments and begin to put yourself back together again.

You reassemble yourself into something that seems foreign to you,

yet fully and instantly recognisable.

I called this painting “incubation” because we doubt and strike at our own perceptions when we encounter obstacles that we think we can't overcome. Yet it is these times when we think about our problems and improving on our own shortcomings that give us the potential to become a better person.