“Do not lose yourself because of material desires and fall into infinite anxiety”



Protect me from what I want

(Illustration Book)

As people’s living standards become more prosperous, their material needs are gradually increasing, especially young generations’ desire for shopping and comparison. Besides this, there is a huge number of self-media experts on the Internet who like to share their daily wear or expensive luxury items. Obviously, it is a profound temptation for those who are just entering the workplace, even if they far exceed their own consumption level, putting them into financial difficulty.

In this case, I intend to use this project to express the reality behind material temptation, and hope that youngsters will protect themselves from material desires and not fall into infinite anxiety.

This illustration book takes a recent graduate named 'Mr. Mr' as its central character. It states that just after he graduated, facing the temptation of material and inner desire, he gained short-lived happiness and satisfaction through crazy shopping. At a certain moment, still feeling empty, he began to question and examine himself again.

I used collage to create the cover of this book, presenting him in a grotesque and funny way. The reason why it is named Self-Portrait is not only that the story is very similar to myself, but also the story and shadow of others. Therefore, while you are reading this book, you are probably looking back on your old self.

* Where did my inspiration come from? 
With the development and use of the Internet, more and more people choose to use social media such as Instagram to share their daily wear. Although the essence of "sharing" is a gesture to be commended, nowadays "sharing" is an act of "inducing and stimulating" people's consumption. More importantly, it is a contemporary form of advertising. The content of this sharing is not only daily supplies, but also involves the promotion of many luxury goods to reflect a high quality life.

* How did I conduct the visual research? 
In terms of character creation, I hoped that Mr. Mr would be grotesque and comical. While researching the artists Joakim Drescher from Denmark and Wakayama Ridawo from Japan, I found that the characters they created were distinct and unique through bright colours and exaggerated expressions.

* How did I develop the experiment?
Before the story began, I did some character expressions and hair design, and I had a general idea of initial image. At the same time, I did some line art of the scene to further generate.

I intend to express people's desire to share, and their feelings of being spied on by others, through collage. Therefore, in the collage above, I used some special paints to express the feeling of being desirable with a strong mood.

Work by Wakayama Ridawo

Work by Joakim Drescher