Illustration- The Fish Night Market

This was the assignment we got during the 1st year Drawing class when we started to learn composition. Students were asked to do a 20”x30” black and white illustration with any medium.

Since it was a black and white piece, I wanted to make it a powerful picture with strong contrast of light and shadow. Before I knew what I was going to draw, I decided I want my character to stand against the light. Then I found out a night market would be an ideal scene for the atmosphere I wanted to create.
Therefore, I created a floating fish night market.
All the booths in the market floated on sea, and people shopped on boats.
And my 3 characters in the drawing were:
A boy and 2 kappas (Japanese water spirits)
The illustration would be one of the events from their adventure in the market.

I came out with 3 sketches in the upper left picture
and decided to do the top one.




The final drawing was done with watercolor and charcoal



After coming out this scene and the characters, I had fun developing the idea even though the drawing assignment was over.
I really like the fish vending machine idea actually haha



Hope I can make it another illustration piece one day~

There is one thing I have to point out
Some people might find out my boy character looks almost the same as Kuro in Tekkon_Kinkreet
Yes, you are right. (I admit my guilt …orz)
I love that character tooo much!!! and Shiro tooXD
But I tried to make change on my character design during the process (but still looks like him…orz…
My inspiration can be found in one scene in which Kuro wares a pair of pants with the fish character (魚) on it.

Anyway, Tekkon-Kinkreet is definitely one of my favorite animated films.
I admire STUDIO4℃ & Taiyo Matsumoto!!!

In the end, I actually made a story out of that illustration.
At the end of the 2nd semester, I realized it could be my animation final.
And use the black and white drawing as the opening of the short XDD



I borrowed the music from Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away and edited it a little bit. I had been thinking about doing something with that soundtrack since the first time I heard it. Spirited Away is also one of my favorite animated films.

Miyazaki is one of the two important figures that inspires me into making animation (the other one being Walt Disney ^^)
And Joe Hisaishi is the famous composer who does the film scores for Miyazaki's animations.
I'm a big fan of Joe Hisaishi.
His music always touch my heart.
I often use his music for my animation excersices.
In fact, the music for the bird elevator animation short from the previous post is also done by him.
It was "A Waltz of Sleigh" from a Korean film named
Welcome to Dongmakgol Village.

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Friend: So the 1st semester you freed bird (see the last post),
_____the 2nd semester you freed fish.
_____What animal are you going to free next? XD
Wolfy: Um…(just realized the similarity of that 2 stories…)