My name is Andrew Chen and I major in illustration. My artwork takes on a share of illustration and imagination that represent cultural and personal views. In my work, I create stories of fictional or nonfictional journeys of others. It is a way to represent people who cannot have their voices heard or expressed. Whether it be in many colors or just in black or white, every single piece and process represents a meaning. These meanings come from the inspiration of others who maybe want their messages to be heard. My works are simple. I don’t want people to look hard into it but to get the messages, passions, and experience through to the view as that is what I believe what the purpose of my artwork is: interests, passions and communication.
My experiences in Studio and Seminar help expand my way of thinking and my skills of illustrating and imagining. It changed my way of perspective at everything around me, to take on challenge that not only view on myself but on other people as well. I took on skills and courses that I did not even know I was capable of doing like making movie posters and making radio pitches.
I think the favorable project was the radio pitch when I had to research and record myself into making a small documentary about an issue. My topic was on the LGBT community discussing about choices, sexuality, and sexual orientation.
Another project was the final visual essay paper. In the beginning there had been some obstacles for me trying to find a visual topic but after a lot of research and discussions, my topic is about LGBT portrayed in films. My studio part is creating film posters and a trailer that feature LGBT characters in response to the lack of diversity within the American film industry.The trailer will be my own original characters, and will display a storyline that associates issues with sexual orientation, sexuality, relationship issues, loneliness, mental issues, and identity. I believe the film industry discriminates against the LGBT community. In many cases, the community is used as props, comedy reliefs, and stereotypes. There is also an issue of hiring actors and actresses who are in the LGBT community. There’s a small percentage of the LGBT community and their roles are only served as a small punchline. When they are casted, they are stereotyped in a way that brings a bad reputation to the community, such as gay men as shown super effeminate, or lesbians are very masculine and macho. I want to create art that speaks to people about how stereotypes restrict reality and pushes away the perfect world that we all look for.
In the future I wish to create more animations and short films that are based on topics of society and people and how they impact the world.
