Sunday 6 May 2012
metamorphosis update
Very sorry for the extreme messiness but here goes nothing....
This is my very very first brain-storm attempt when I really had no idea what I was going to be doing. I just moved on from Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga and then Julian Casablancas to Kurt Cobain, but then I suddenly thought of hair.... so I started 'brainstorming' and writing down stuff related to hair... and from then I realized how much of a complex topic it'd be if it was just... hair. So I thought... oh, hairstyles are always almost completely different if you compare it to a different decade...
So then I thought of beginning with a frame of a caveman... next frame - 1920s, and then the next would be 1940s... and the last one would be... a skull with a little bit of hair... But then it didn't really have a concept... I just randomly thought of it so it lacks substance.
Then I thought about growing up as a girl.... But that was too boring, too. So I stuck with hair... I asked my lecturer about how we're supposed to end it - as in, what to put on the last frame, as an ending - but he said it's metamorphosis. It never ends. So I could put whatever I want (well not whatever... but whatever that would make sense..) in the last frame... So I thought.. Hey! Why not do hairstyles in the 1920s, 1940s, 1960s and 1980s.
I came up with a very small list of things I should find out about hairstyles in these different decades:
To be honest, I did a lot more research on the 1920s than I did on the other decades because I was really interested about the Flappers.
So anyway, about Flappers. Basically, in the 1920s, after World War I ended, there was a period of liberalism, social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange and these led to the "new breed" of young Western women known as Flappers (refers to a young bird flapping its wings while learning to fly) who would usually be described as a young lady who hasn't promoted to long frocks and wearing their hair up. They had bobbed hair, listened to jazz music and flaunted unacceptable behavior.
More keywords for flappers:
Excessive make-up, drinker, casual sex, smoker, attractive, reckless, independent
Meanwhile, in the 1940s, when millions of men joined the armed forces, women took on an active role in World War II and took on many paid jobs that previously had been held by men - such as bank teller, shoe salesperson or aircraft mechanic. Woman started working in factories - this was called the Rosie the Riveter phenomenon. They mostly wore dull-colored, unladylike uniforms - factory overalls, to be exact - but they still managed to look feminine by styling their hair and putting on lipstick.
In the 1960s, there was a whole psychedelia phase as there was a widespread use of psychoactive drugs which influenced the whole psychedelia trend. People wore clothes with bright colors and psychedelic prints consisting of flowers and paisley and whatnot. 1960s was a decade of anti-war/the peace movement.
This is one of my many failed attempts to draw a flapper...
As for the 1980s, since MTV was established in 1981, the 80s was called the MTV generation. Everyone had big hair. I was particularly interested in the people who had crazy (and messy) multicolored hair influenced by heavy metal bands that were popular at the time..
Labels: illustration, visual narrative
