Yukai Du is an illustrator and animator from China who is based in Brighton. He has worked with clients like Adobe / Wired UK / TED-Ed / Computer Arts / LINE / BBC / MIT Technology Review / The Washington Post / The New York Times / The Telegraph. I love this intricate and detailed style and his limited colour palettes. His style of drawing people is quite similar to my own and I find the way he has made them come to life via his animations very inspiring. I love the dots/patterns/dashes and scribbles he uses to create interesting composition and beautiful details in each of his pieces. Being able to look at his sketchbook is a real treat as well as I am able to see his start to finish process and how his ideas progressed.
The metaphor of “the wolf” is a great way to express all the possible dangers that might turn up unexpectedly in your life. The wolf’s arrival is a metaphor for any kind of crisis when you find yourself in trouble and need other people to come help you.
The Lesson
The story teaches this moral as a kind of practical lesson, showing you the actual value of telling the truth: you should always tell the truth, because if you lie, then people will not believe you, even when you are telling the truth. This fable presents a kind of argument or demonstration that is intended to convince you of the value of telling the truth.
The Sheep
The character who has paid the highest price in the story. A bit of fun for the boy that turned out to be a matter of life or death for the sheep.
Its representation of life is clear. The scarcity of bread is direct threat of death. Bread crumbles in Hansel and Gretel show how fragile and insecure is our position.
Oven t is a representation of a womb. It offers a possibility of birth (or in this case rebirth), but also death if an already born person gets back in (refuses to grow up).
The oven is a representation of a womb. It offers a possibility of birth (or in this case rebirth), but also death if an already born person gets back in (refuses to grow up).
It is a representation of a womb. It offers a possibility of birth (or in this case rebirth), but also death if an already born person gets back in (refuses to grow up).
Candy
The candy represents temptation which the children could not resist.
Rite of Passage/Coming of Age
When Hansel and Gretel’s parents decide to abandon them because they can no longer feed them, it is very symbolic that the children are abandoned in the forest. They are thrust deep into the woods and left alone. Essentially, this signifies a sort of rite of passage to adulthood, where they are forced to face the shadowy aspects of themselves and human nature, which can be dark and terrifying.
Hunger
Another symbol that figures prominently in the tale is hunger. Hunger is the most basic of instincts and drives the actions of all living things, even more so than sexual desire. Hansel and Gretel’s parents forsake their children because of hunger. It is a primordial need that can overpower all sense of reason and humanity. Greed/Instinct.
Cannibalism
They are then captured and are faced with the terrible realisation that humans, like animals, are meat and can be eaten. Cannibalism is the ultimate symbol of the dark, primordial state. It represents the animal instinct taking complete control of one’s psyche, where hunger overpowers all human reason.
When the girl reaches the age when she turns into a woman, her hair is one of her most powerful tools for attracting the opposite gender. With covering (or cutting) her hair, she sends a message she is not available yet (or anymore).
When she gets a hood from her grandmother, we can say the life forces are passing from older (going) to younger (coming) generation. The red color is, of course, the color of life and blood. It can be easily associated with menstrual blood.
The red color of the hood is an invention of Charles Perrault and we should know in the 17th century decent woman would never wear a red hood because red was the color of sin. Only ladies with really bad reputation wore red dresses and Perrault’s insinuations were obvious.
The Forest
In many fairy tales the main character (the protagonist) must go in the forest. It seems trees are an endless source of inspiration in folklore. There are many speculations why the forest is so important but we can also stick to the obvious: most of the people in medieval or pre-medieval times lived near forests.
People’s existence was closely related to wood from practically forever, but forests also represent unknown, although very serious, danger.
In psychoanalysis a forest symbolizes unconsciousness. Leonard Lutwack goes even further and he labels it as untamed feminine sexuality. Why? The forest is a very fertile place, but it is also wild, uncultivated, and unpredictable.
It is not a coincidence so many popular heroes and heroines (Red Cap, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Goldilocks) must get lost in the woods just to come back as more responsible (and we can say domesticated) persons.
Important character transformations within folklore always take place in the forest.
A Feminist’s View on the Story
20th century brought another interpretation of this probably most interpreted fairy tale of all. Feminists see a clear case of rape in The Little Red Riding Hood. It is a story about rape.
The aggressive and active male is preying on passive heroine and her granny. He is in the end defeated by another aggressive and active male. Case closed.
Well, not so fast. Feminists have some good points but we should not forget we are really talking only about two versions of Red Riding Hood here. Both were written at specific times by specific members of society with their own beliefs about roles of genders and passive heroine and powerless old lady fit well in their view of the world in the 17th or 19th centuries.
The poison apple:
This would seem to point all the way back to the biblical reference of the apple which was offered to Eve by the serpent (evil/Satan). The evil queen offers Snow White the apple in much the same way. Snow White knows she should not be speaking to strangers, but she does it anyway and she pays for that mistake by falling under the spell.
The significance of seven:
The number seven was used many times in the Bible for signifying perfection. The book of Revelation contains numerous groups of sevens such as angels, churches, trumpets, crowns, mountains, stars, and kings. It is one of the most significant numbers in Christianity in the sense that “God created the world in seven days”, or rather he created the world in six days and on the seventh he rested.
The names of the dwarfs:
Some people have thought to correlate the seven dwarfs with the seven deadly sins, but that correlation doesn’t hold water. In the Grimm version of Snow White, the seven dwarfs do not have names. In Disney’s version of Snow White, the dwarfs do have names but those names were chosen out of sixty or so possible names and they do not correspond to the seven deadly sins. The names of the seven dwarfs are: Dopey, Grumpy, Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy and Sleepy. These names are more aptly “the seven moods of man” rather than sins.
The Seven Deadly Sins:
The Seven Deadly Sins are represented in the story of Snow White, but not in the form of the seven dwarfs.
Pride/Vanity: Clearly the vanity of the Evil Queen. The mirror is clearly a direct reference to vanity.
Lust/Extravagance: Again, the Queen as royalty is extravagant
Gluttony: The seven dwarfs eating (maybe a stretch). Or in the original tale, the Queen actually eats the heart of Snow White.
Greed: The Queen again
Sloth: Originally meant sadness, melancholy,apathy, depression, and joylessness which would distract from attention to god. This applies to the dwarfs after Snow White dies and sloth in the form of sloppiness certainly applies to the seven dwarfs in their manner of housekeeping.
Wrath: The wrath of the seven dwarfs upon the witch after they discover Snow White dead.
Envy: The Queen (again)
The seven deadly sins have opposites in the seven holy virtues: Humility, Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patiences, kindness. All of these are characteristics of Snow White.
Resurrection:
Snow White “dies” and comes back to life. This certainly parallels the death and resurrection of Jesus from the Bible.
The hand washing:
The part of the story where Snow White demands that the dwarfs wash could be related to the cleansing of baptism. After the dwarfs have washed, they become people that seem to have a new purpose in life, except for Grumpy who protests the most. Grumpy does undergo a transformation throughout the movie though, from a skeptical dwarf into one that is very devoted to Snow White.
A millennial is a person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century.
Engagement with social media releases a chemical called dopamine, every time a response is received on facebook or your follow count goes up on Instagram or you receive likes – this chemical is released. And it feels good so young people constantly want a hit of it, they are always on their phones. And if you get unfriended and no likes – this makes you feel sad. Dopamine is the same chemical which is released when we smoke, drink or gamble. Basically, it is highly addictive. And with alcohol, smoking and gambling there are suggestions/restrictions/age restrictions about how much you should intake but for social media – there is a constant accessibility and no one telling you that you shouldn’t do it, and even 10 year olds can access it. This needs to be addressed more, people should acknowledge when they are using social media too much and reframe from scrolling when bored.
Even though young people today constantly talk to friends online, it is becoming an increasing problem that these social media friendships are just superficial, they aren’t real. Too many kids don’t know how to grow deep meaningful relationships. They have fun with their friends but they don’t count on their friends, they don’t rely on their friends and they know their friends will cancel on them if something better comes along. They don’t practice the social skill set enough to have better friendships and they don’t have a good coping mechanism for dealing with stress. Therefore, instead of turning to a person for help and reassurance when they are stressed they turn to social media, to a device. This offers a temporary release but studies have shown people who use facebook more actually have a higher risk of suffering from depression.
Putting your phone on the table at a meeting or out for dinner with friends gives the table a subconscious message that they aren’t that important to that person. But young people today don’t put their phones away because they are addicted. And like all addictions, social media can actually ruin relationships, cost time, cost money and make your life worse.
Another problem is impatience, today we live in a world where we can buy a product and get it delivered the next day with Amazon, where we don’t need to date because we can just swipe right with Tinder, where we can watch what we want whenever we want thanks to Netflix and other movie subscriptions. We need instant gratification and we can get it with pretty much anything. Except for job satisfaction and relationships – two of the most important things in life. Love, joy, job fulfillment, self-confidence and love of life all take time. But the journey is long and difficult and people need the patience and dedication to see it through. Now with young people, we are seeing an increase in suicide rates, depression, in kids dropping out of school and of accidental deaths due to drug overdoses.
Social media and the constant access we have to it through our phones is a temptation. Young people today need to stop going on their phones at every second they can be in when you go to the bathroom, waiting for a bus or traveling on the tube. We must take this temptation away and that is when ideas start to come and innovation is formed when our minds start to wonder we get our best ideas.
For my primary research I drew from real life in public places to get an idea of body positions, different angles and spacing. These drawings not only helped me improve my figurative drawing but also helped develop my personal style for the people I would depict in my illustrations.
Using ink, watercolour, fine liner and, pencil and coloured pens I drew a variety of different people in public spaces, mainly people using electronic devices.
I also went to my local park and took photos of trees for the background forest of my Hansel and Gretel piece. From these, I created ink and watercolour drawings from the photos.
As well as this, for inspiration and ideas about the different elements to go in the other fairytale pieces like Little Red, I drew object around me in my house and from images I found on the internet. This allowed me to end up with a library of imagery to play with.
