Birthday Angels 365

Proposed by Suan Zhu

1.0  Introduction:

The project Birthday Angels 365 is a project that tries to create and synthesize new costumes and architecture on existing objects and expresses abstract ideas through artistic representation for every single day on earth, creating costumes for each of 365 days. For this fund raising campaign, we are looking forward for your contribution of the first phrase of this project, to create the color illustration compilation of costumes. The project especially emphasizes creating new costumes, architectures, cities, and underground metro stations. The abstract concepts such as seasons, emotions, and dream will be represented visually in the context of the objects mentioned above. The ultimate goal is to create entirely original design based on everyday objects to form a new world. This world will be serving as a background for an epic story I am writing.

1.1  Problem

The buildings and costumes appeared in the movie of fantasy novels such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings does not fully express the emotion and feeling of a place and a person to the fullest extent. Therefore, a story creator should establish the design of all objects, costumes, places prior to his or her writing.

Who am I? My name is Suan Zhu, I have spend my life in many different parts of the world and speak several different languages, I always looking for ways to incorporate various cultural style into a coherent framework. I am trained as a computer software engineer and worked on design and game development. I have contributed to Newgrounds.com and created some popular flash movies with thousands of reviews. My penname is theflatworld,  you can view these work at:

 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/309291

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/313442

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/313193

1.2 Purpose: Symbolic Innovation

I put all of thoughts organized into a visual project before my significant commitment to writing. Since the current phase of the project requires extensive art work, this may well be a good art research project. The project purpose is illustrated below:

In order to convey emotion and feeling visually, I propose a theory of beauty that can help an artist to generate novel and interesting production. The theory of beauty is derived from my personal experience through experimentation in drawing. Here are the four principles:

• Principle of outlines/shapes – an object is perceived to be different from another by its contours or shape. The shape itself can be symmetrical, cyclic, repetitive, or irregular.
• Principle of Texture – an object can contain a uniform, a gradient, or a medley of colors. The colors, combining with reflection, ambience, and shadow, forms the texture of the object. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the outline and texture. That is, the more complex the outline, the simpler the texture should be attached to the object to provide a sense of beauty.
• Principle of Symbolic Association – A pillar carved into the shape of a standing human is an example of this principle. This principle is the underlying mechanism for representing abstract idea. The owl castle drawing on the right is one of my drawings using this principle.  The central parts of the castle are represented as the body of an owl. The wings are attached 3-story buildings. The base of the castle is supported by pillars. Each of these pillars is a foot of cat statues. Symbolic association can convey emotion to a higher level because existing objects can be encoded into objects and decoded by its viewer. As a result, more information can be hold in each picture. In the owl castle drawing, a viewer can feel a sense of scariness because black cats are represented as ominous and owls appear only during the night. Most of my drawings will focus on encoding existing animals, objects into other objects.
• Principle of Comparison and Contrast – this is the last principle in my theory. This principle applies to any viewer in several ways. First of all, a viewer who has never seen a virtual 3D art work may rate an ordinary 3D art work as beautiful, but his rating for the same art work will decrease as he or she saw more 3D art works.

This phrase of the project will focus with the principle of symbolic association. It will experiment indirectly with the principles of outlines because different icons and symbols contain distinct outlines. The experimentation with texture will be limited since digital transformation and color printing contains fewer color compares to regular painting work, ensuring speedy delivery to you the contributor. Finally, the principle of comparison and contrast will be excluded because the project tries to bring objective result to his viewer apart from visual manipulations.

1.3  Scope

At the current phase of the project, all art works shall be drawn by pencil on paper, the process creation will be created and uploaded to Youtube for everyone to view. Selected images (the best ones based on community consensus) will be translated into computer in color using Flash, Painter, or Maya. I shall produce color-printed illustration at the end of the project as an abstract for my future novel and project demo.

Much of my inspirations have been jotted down during the day, downloading pictures from images.google.com, in my dreams, and observing the shapes of objects in nature. My close friends have occasionally given advice to me about my drawings.

Section 2.0 Expected Benefits of Symbolic Association

The immediate benefit of Symbolic Association project is an increase of production of art work for me. By engaging into art work with little disturbances from other factors, the number of good works can be developed will grow quantitatively and qualitatively. As the project grows in size since I have planned the project to be continued well beyond 2012. My current development on the Beauty Theory and Creativity Theory may eventually lead to digital art works.

Section 3.0 Emotionally engaging, Creative, and Impressive New World

The Symbolic Innovation project is closely tied to the story that I am writing. The story describes a boy called WindBell of Wind, who is graduating from high school, tried to save a girl from suicide. Both of them fell from the top of a roof. The boy died and found himself in “heaven”, where he met a lot of people from different walks of life and different social classes. They all had some interesting sorts of death. Jakartom, an absurd scientist with enthusiasm and bold spirit, died because he used his self-constructed rocket to fly to the moon. Akarley died of heart attack after he won a million dollar lottery as a beggar. A firefighter died because he tried to save people trap inside a building. Another person burned himself after he set a fire on his birthday party. A Santa Claus died after his flying wagon hit an airplane. These are just some of two hundred characters with different causes of death. The story is actually satirical, reflecting problems in the real world. Some of these characters are actually based on real story and real life subjects despite their exaggeration in my novel. All of them were dissatisfied with their lives in one way or another. Luckily, they got a chance to be re-living as themselves. However, they first have to learn how to be a student in the University of Sky and to pass the final exams. Prior to their entrance, each participant enters a competition. Those who come on the top will immediately “reborn” as themselves. The runners up will be picked by the universities in heaven to learn how to relive as themselves. The University of Sky, indirectly based on my experience in college years, contains several schools. These are the listed below:

• School of Love – teaches the ghosts how to help other living being to obtain their love. Lessons such as shooting arrows at loving couples are taught.
• School of River – controls different rivers in the world, helping prevent flood and increase irrigation of rivers around the world in the draught season. Students learn lessons at the Dragon castle, a castle locates in the middle of a pond which bears a resemblance of a dragon with oriental style buildings and roofs.
• School of Dream – communicates words and thoughts between the living and the dead. The students who learn lessons at the bat castle, a castle has a shape similar to a standing up bat with its wings crawling in. The wings are actually halls with supporting pillars.
• School of Poker – controls luck and chance, the games play of the living world.
• School of Scariness – represents dates such as the Halloween, magic and dark powers. Students learn lessons at the Owl castle, which I have mentioned above.
• School of Chess – controls the chess boards in the living world. Students took lessons simultaneously at several different building scattered around a chess board-like field. The buildings actually move occasionally, mimicking a real chess fight.
• School of Heavenly Constructions – help to maintain the conditions of living world buildings. Students studies in a great wall constructed on the floating islands in the sky. The concept bears some similarity with Hayao Miyazaki’s castle in the animated film “Castle in the Sky”.
• School of Fairies – helps to grow trees, and exerts power for all living things. The fairies learn their lessons at castles constructed in the middle of a lake. These castles look more like a cluster of towers in the shape of plants.
• School of Seas – maintains the natural flow of seas. A ship-like building drifts in the moat around the main campus every day, completing a cycle every 24 hours.
• School of Time – controls the time in the living world, reverse, stop, and fast forward someone’s biological time. The students from the school of time, unfortunately, have to commute to different metro stations in the inner loops of Arcturus, the city where the campus is located. These stations are named one clock to twelve clock stations consecutively.
• School of Color – controls the myriad of color as we see the artists of nature. Students learn their lessons in metro trains. A total of seven different metro lines located in the city. As a result, each line represents a primary color in the natural frequency of light.
• School of Constellations – supposedly to spray meteorites and record everyone’s wish and try to help living people fulfilling them. They live in castles constructed on the top of floating islands in the air and connected by bridges to form the shape of a given constellation.

The students enrolled in each of these schools are grouped into classes; here is the list of the classes:

• The class of river has distinct head dress carved out of stone with different child like angels sitting on top of them. Their hairs fall naturally down from the top of their heads, representing the flow of water. Different hair style and color represent different rivers. Finally, their clothing is made of a distorted type of oriental ancient dress. The class of river represents the element of water in alchemy.
• The class of poker represents 51 weeks in a given year, which is authentically based on the Renaissance origin of deck cards. Their hats and clothing are made of sustained paper, constructed with beautiful symmetric geometry shapes and colors similar to those of the original colors found in the deck cards. The class of poker represents wood in alchemy because paper is extracted from woods.
• The class of love encompasses every single holiday established in human world which conveys emotions, including Valentine's day, Mother's day, Father's day, begging for Love's day, October fool's day, and April fool's day. The class of love's costumes made up of different materials, including a headdress with a metal kissing couple placed on top of a heart-shaped gemstone decorated with golden frame.

• The class of the great wall contains fourteen great passes on the Great Wall of China such as Juyong Pass, Shanhai Pass, Yanmen Pass. Their costumes are made of clay and ceramic, representing the dirt of earth and fire symbolically in the alchemy.
• The class of fairies represents fairies as well as flowers and plants. Their clothing is made of leaves and flower petals. They are classified under the class of wood in alchemy.
• The class of sea represents the mermaids in fantasy; they are classified under the class of water in alchemy.
• The class of ocean includes fourteen members. (The seven grand ocean generals and the seven grand ocean pirate pilot including Columbus' three ships: Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria) Their clothing is made of woods and woolen sails. They represent the element of water in alchemy.
• The class of gothic ghosts wears black suits representing bad omens such as black cats, punctured bumpkins, and rotten apples. They form the ghost week in the week following the Halloween day. They represent the element of fire in alchemy.
• The class of color represents seven colors as we can see in the world. Their costumes are made of the color of the natural spectrum. Each class is further grouped into different schools.
• The class of jieqi represents twenty four solar terms (micro-seasons) in a year in the northern hemisphere and twenty four terms in a year in the southern hemisphere. The concept of Jieqi originated from Chinese lunar calendar and is used extensively in Korea and Japan prior to the 20th century. The practice of Jieqi recording reflected its practical use in agriculture to record the change in weather throughout the year. It is to represent certain dates of the year. Members in the class of jieqi wear Oriental type of clothing.
• The class of Dream includes seven members, each represents a different type of dream (including nightmare) as proposed by Sigmund Freud.
• The class of Mermaids represents different types of fish and different seas and lakes on earth, their costumes looks like scales, pre-dominated with women-like costumes.
• The class of time represents 12 different time division on a clock.
• The class of men and beasts consists of legendary figures from human imaginations such as centaurs, Minotaur, and many other half human half animal forms of beings.
• Finally, the class of chess represents the chess tradition inherited from ancient times until current times. However, the class of chess includes more than six different types. Additional types and costumes have been created for new interesting chess types.

Finally, the university is located at Arcturus, a fictional city in Heaven. Arcturus contains seven metro lines, each of their station links to certain real world places. Some of the stations are listed below:

• Telephone Station – each pillar in the station represent a telephone booth, different telephone connects to different telephone booths located at different locations around the world.
• Prison Station – each pillar in the station is a gargoyle, their mouth is the opening to different prison cell in different parts of the real world.
• Harp Station – each pillar is a stone statue of a woman playing harp. However, the upper bar of the harp is actually an extension of the women’s hair in a curved shape and the lower bar is her skirt. In between the bars are metal strings. The upper level of the station is a hall of music, decorated with music notes of some famous composer. Supposedly, one could hear the music playing when one walks on it.

• Observatory Station – connects to different astronomical observatories in the real world.

• Windmill Station – connects to Prague, Czech Republic. The buildings are distinct baroque style, and the windmill propellers are made into the shape of butterfly.

•  Haunted House Station – connects to different haunted house in the real world.

Currently, 45 station connects to different things in the real world are planned although only 21 stations are designed. The following map shows the location and relationship between each station.

These are the current major art work ideas associated with concepts in the story. Ideas within each of these categories are expanding everyday, while new categories and concepts opens up frequently throughout the year. These and the new ones created based on your funding will be translated into color and printed in color for large denomination contributors.

Section 4: Implementation and Schedule

In order to conduct my production, all I really require is time. Giving me a full year of time dedicated to this project, I expect to hundreds drawings of different things.

4.1 A Timeline for Development

As outlined in the Gantt chart below, the Visual Drawing should continue as long as it requires, the first color illustrations in the series can be published by late 2013, and story writing will follow shortly after.

Table 4.4: projected timeline for completion of the project

My current project funding phrase shall be dedicated to costumes creation for remaining untouched days, new style architectures, and cities. I feel there is a plenty of freedom and emotion that can be expressed with different shapes of clothing and building that have not been explored before. Unlike any engineering project, my progress can not be measured in numerical terms. In the long run, the project shall start to incorporate other interested members to work at different section of the project.

Section 6.0: Cost Analysis

Final costs for this project may vary slightly from the initial estimates calculated below.

6.1 One year period living cost – Living expenses, housing

As I have stated earlier, all I require is the basic living necessity. Finding $800~$1000 apartment per month will not be hard at all. Food expenses will be about $10~$12 per day.

additional drawing videos: