STUDIO Bridge 4 [Research & Response] SHIFT IN LARGE

• Project Description

For the studio component of Bridge 4, you will create a final project that is derived from your personal research and exploration to be presented as a final thesis. Your topic of personal research should explore one of the following topics: your body, your beauty, your family, or your money. Then you have to expand your selected topic into one of the following larger contexts: your gender, your race, your culture, or your class. From the research, you will then create a prototype of a piece you would like to generate for your final project, which directly relates to your intended major at Parsons.

 

• Reflection

The topics I chose were Body and Gender.

Nowadays, fewer and fewer people believe a girl must have long hair and makeup, or a boy must wear pants and shoes without heels. But when seeing a person having the feature traditionally considered not belonging to his or her gender,  people sometimes tend to try finding explanations to persuade themselves to accept this “uncommonness.” However, why people disobey following the traditional male or female appearance is not always for showing his or her identity, or making a profound argument to the society. Sometimes, the reason why a person crosses this “boarder of genders” is merely that he or she personally likes it.

In the comic I wrote and illustrated, I used the main character’s longhair to represent the feature that traditionally doesn’t belong to an assigned gender. As the subtitle of this story, “long hair” also serves as the metaphor of my work’s core concept.

I decided to present the two topics, Body and Gender, by drawing a comic to tell a story. That was because as an illustration major, doing storytelling with images interests me. Comic, as the combination of narratives and images, is one of the most direct and efficient way to do so. Also, since I needed to spend a lot of time and energy on the final, choosing a material interesting to me could make me enjoy the process of working more, therefore produce a better outcome.

Actually, originally the main character’s gender was female. Yet, that made it hard to come up with an ending, as well as building a persuasive and strong story. But after I changed the character into a boy, the whole story has become more complete and logical. A boy with long hair brings out the contrast between other people’s guessing and his own interest more strongly than a female character. Besides, it also adds a sense of surprise when readers see the last page and are finally sure he is a boy. Hopefully it would be surprising.

The main character’s hair was drawn by dark, obvious and strong brush while other parts of the comic were done with fine lines and light colors. By creating this contrast, it not only lets readers easily recognize who is the main character, but also makes the metaphor, or the symbol, of this story’s main idea stand out.