start from here

I a m Y u a n j i n W e i , g r a d u a t e d f r o m G u a n g Z h o u A c a d e m y C o l l e ge o f F i n e A r t . I majored in Art Education, specializing in Chinese Traditional Painting. I am a rookie to illustration, I have strong academic painting skills. After I graduated, I decide to go to the United States

for the MFA Illustration Practice program at Maryland Institute college of Art. In the first year at MICA I learned a lot about illustration techniques InDesign, layout and book making. In addition, I learned how to be an illustrator, and how to be creative, patient, enthuastic and responsible.

Changing my identityW h e n I j u m p e d f r o m t r a d i t i o n a l p a i n t i n g t o western illustration, I came up with a question: How can I combine the two together? I would love people to see my work as identifiable.

QR code

"Hidden" is the very first project in the fall semster. It was quite an interesting project. We made QR codes for our first exhibition. The code with lips in the middle led the viewer to a paper stop motion YouTube video which introduced me. The other QR code was made to connect to work by another artist in the show. I feel that art work connected with high technology is a future trend. After working on this project, I gained a basic skill of how to make my work cooperate with the internet.

This project connects making prints with using computer software. I feel excited to be able to produce my work in more than one way. I am used to creating traditional painting with brush and color, but after this project I wil l use PhotoShop and other software to enrich my work.

Mash Up

Book Making

I used drawing to illustrated verbs in Chinese, because in Chinese we have a different language system. Nouns can be directly translated, but verbs can not. I made this book to combine eastern and western words together.

Character Development

In the course Advanced Publishing Workshop I came up with an idea to make a book about what is in other people's wallets. Then I change my mind to let people explore the wallet. I created a character named Lando Gentry, who represents rich people and their lives. He has a very traditional Chinese cultural back g round. which we can see by his appearance. I created his background and his life including a Superbank card, receipts, coffee card,etc. This is his wallet. Though his wallet people can deeply know him and his life style. I also created his Facebook page to further develop his character.

2D to 3D

We had a project called "2D to 3D". I painted a traditional painting called “Fortune Cookies”, and then I developed the fortune cookies into real objects adding other references. I named my project "Traditional Fast Food" which is like combining the American fast food culture and Chinese traditional concept.After that I continuted to develop the character Lando Gentry, a rich man who came to the United States to start his fortune cookie business. I made the product on the right side for Art Market. I used the technolgies from the Mash Up project. I scanned traditional style drawing of diamonds, grapes,fur,cherries and so on, colored them in PhotoShop, then printed on canvas paper and constructed paper forture cookies.I also made an award and a newspaper to promot, like a real industry.

Thinking like a illustratorAfter the f irst semester, I get the sense of how to work in different methods of thinking and material techniques. I am trying to find my way in illustration.

Munny Doll

We were visited by Aya Kakeda, who was very helpful for our project. We learned something important from her career: if we want to develop a character, it should be recongnizable and have an interesting surface. This munny doll is a character from one of my paintings. I added the bunny ears, breast and wristband to the ving blank. I also painted a rabbit girl's costume for my munny doll. I learned a lot about turning a character from 2D to 3D in this project.

Licensing

These patterns were made from photograph I took of snacks, I used PhotoShop to mix them together and change the color to make the images looks more interesting than the food itself.

Licensing

These patterns tell the story about donuts being killed in different kinds of scenes, such as daily life and horror movies. I combined them together. and made it more complex than my other patterns, yet still readable.

Donut's Movie

After I made the Donut pattern, I began to developed the character like I did for Lando Gentry. We had a "Stop motion" workshop to develop a short narrative. From the experiences of character design and 2D to 3D project, I decide I have to made a story about a donut was being killed by another donut in the ocean.

Donut's Book

Then I created a project for the MoCCA festival. I extendED the donut's identity. I have four sections about the donut: the origin of donut, donut dictonary, fairy donut tales and famous donut cameos. I used different color paper and printed the donut pattern on transparent paper for the cover. The most important thing in this project was that I learned how to use InDesign to print on both side paper and creating the page in a signature.

Self PromotionSince I have been in the programe, I have learned to extend my ideas to the world. I will be using digital techinques and making skill to creatwork for the market place and clients.I wi l l a lso take lessons I have learned from my assignments to promote my work in a changing market place

Skype Team

This semester besides the programe assignments, we also had several teams: Etsy team, MoCCA team, Website team and Skype team. Dingding, Jennifer and I were on the Skype team. Our purpose was interview selected artist via Skype. Before we sent the invitation to the artists we had to collected names of artists our programe member wanted. We selected the top five artists and we sent invitations to them to be interviewed. Unfortunately, we did not get a positive reply from any artist for the interview. We had to create a back up plan. Each of us made a presentation to introduce one artist, We also preparean information folder including three artists' statement, thank you card and IMovie CD, and some snacks. Although this time we did not achieve our goal, I still learned how to do the research and cooperate with others to complete the assignment.

Child Abuse

This special assignment was to design a scenairo for the Baltimore C h i l d A b u s e C e n t e r. I h a d t w o plans. First, I made a stop motion animation for children. Using a shadow to illustrate the child abuser, showed what the child should do in an abusive situation. The second plan was to educate the adult to treat their kid as their friend.This solution was called "Kid=Friend". The idea represents they should never abuse their friend like they do to their children. I showed the circle of abuse that happens when abused children grow up to be adults. They will follow the same steps and abuse their children. It is like an alarm to protect the future.

Words on Wheels

Our prog ram worked with the Mar yland Mass Transit Association(MTA) to create transit posters. It is a good experience to use my traditional painting in this project. We had to incorporate the student's poem and created an illustration. Our professor give us feedback as if she was the client. After completing the posters we had a launch with the MTA and the students at Port Discovery in Baltimore. It was very interesting to meet the student. At the end of the meeting, we placed our posters in one of the MTA buses. In this project, I found it is fun to collaborate with the students, although my student did not like my work so much. Despite this, it was still a very good oppurtunity for me to learn how to fit in contemporary marketplace.

Best Friendsby Patricia Young11th GradeFriendship Academy of Science and TechnologyLauren Greber, Teacher

tighter than your favoritepants the one you took to your junior

dance

the one you tellall your secrets to and he or she would never tell

anyone about you

the one who’s going to beby your side

through thick and thin

your best friend

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Water MovementThe ocean water is so beautiful.I love it so much.It’s so smooth.I love floating.It just makes me look so beautiful.I can just pass out.I love the animals in the ocean: blowfish, catfish.Water makes me think of heaven!

by Sean Thompson4th GradeVioletville Elementary/Middle SchoolMicaela Gramelis, Teacher

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Best Friendsby Patricia Young11th GradeFriendship Academy of Science and TechnologyLauren Greber, Teacher

tighter than your favoritepants the one you took to your junior

dance

the one you tellall your secrets to and he or she would never tell

anyone about you

the one who’s going to beby your side

through thick and thin

your best friend

ILLU

STR

ATIO

N &

DES

IGN

: YU

ANJI

N W

EI /

MIC

A ‘1

3

Water MovementThe ocean water is so beautiful.I love it so much.It’s so smooth.I love floating.It just makes me look so beautiful.I can just pass out.I love the animals in the ocean: blowfish, catfish.Water makes me think of heaven!

by Sean Thompson4th GradeVioletville Elementary/Middle SchoolMicaela Gramelis, Teacher

ILLU

STR

ATIO

N &

DES

IGN

: YU

ANJI

N W

EI /

MIC

A ‘1

3

Thank you

Yuanjin Wei

To be continue...