Characters, concept, presentation

After formative assessment, I try to fill in all everything I should have done in the past six weeks, including cultural research, presentation, material testing etc etc. Before research, I have no idea on where my idea was directed to, even I already have a really good idea to start with and look forward to make creatively designed characters.

I've done historical research on monster art in Japan, looking to study relationship between monsters and culture, why Japanese would invented monster of this kind.

Brief History of Yōkai Art

Yōkai (monster) art had different approaches in different time period. In the early painting of yōkai, like Hell scroll, the concept was came from Buddhist iconography. After that in Muromachi period, Night Parade of Hundred Demons scroll had illustrated the breaking out plague due to warfare. Then in Edo period, Toriyama Sekien contributed very much in collecting and recording demon lore in his 12 books of encyclopaedia of yōkai, provide a clearer context of the yōkai.

Understanding towards yōkai changed with the civilisation, when science from western started to introduce to Japan. Inoue Enryo,  philosopher, explained that yōkai was intended to explain the unusual phenomenon like thunder and lightning, that people in that past without the knowledge of science cannot make sense of. Based on Enryo study, he also found that most yōkai was originated from China and only minor part of them are genuine to Japan. Therefore in Meiji period, yōkai became legend that stay in the past and replaced with science.

In modern days, yōkai has became representation of the past and told with purpose of entertainment.

Research has shown that yōkai was took from the idea of Buddhist story, which have more influences from China. Yōkai could have the idea of science since their purpose was to explain phenomenon like science did.

For further research, I want to look at monster in Chinese depiction. The Classic of Mountain and Seas (山海经 Shan hai jing) has mentioned on several study about origin of yōkai and another is Strange Tales from Chinese Studio (聊斋志异 Liao zhai zhi yi) which told stories of strange phenomenon related to deities or demons.

I've been thinking about the presentation for my characters and I wish to take the idea of emaki (scroll), thought I could put narrative for my characters to make the concept more clear.