#2. A Character A Day - Hwangjae

This week I tried to catch up with what I couldn't post last week.

So it means that I have only two days left for this week's project--designing a character a day.

You can see my last week's project (designing a place a day) in the following links:

Day 1. A Flower Shop

Day 2. A Convenience Store

Day 3. A Corridor Wall

Day 4. A Mysterious Bookstore

Day 5. Crossroads

Day 6. A Real Estate Agency

Day 7. A Street Vendor

So, here we go, a character for today!

(for my new TV drama script project, Crossing)

His name is Hwangjae Do (도황재). He is a 27-year-old gang member. 

I like his name because Hwangjae in Korean has similar sounds to the word for "emperor" (Hwangje).

I chose this name because I wanted his appearance and behavior to be rather haughty. 

I am not so sure I successfully captured that in my drawing. Maybe not. :P

But anyway, he is a person who looks like he is shut inside. He does not hang out, he does not talk much, no one really knows what he is thinking and is doing in his free time. But he does what he does (..) pretty well, so no one bothers to bother him.

In this sense, he is similar to Miso, another character in my story. She is a young melancholic writer (age 17).

(You can see my drawings and ideas about her here.)

In fact, Miso and Hwangjae know each other, and the nature of their relationship plays quite a role in my story. But their relationship hasn't been so significant before I drew Hwangjae. That is, after I drew him, I liked him, so I increased his role in my story. :P 

I guess this is an example of how doodling one's character helps a writer construct a character and the relevant story lines.

ENOOOUGH pre-talk. Below is the first step of my drawing. An image of a rather haughty young man.

It took only a couple of minutes to draw this, and I was thinking, wow, it's going to be easy to construct his image. Well, it wasn't. I got stuck.

I couldn't decide his hairstyle.

Hairstyle, you might say. What is so important about a character's hairstyle?

I don't think it is very important. But the fact that I couldn't decide on his hair meant that I didn't really get his personality and lifestyle. Just take a look at people around you and you will notice that you can learn a lot about that person from his/her hair. So when I draw a character, I usually draw his/her hair first. 

The initial hairstyle for Hwangjae was inspired by this character (구준표) from a Korean drama (based on a Japanese manga) "Boys over Flowers," played by Minho Lee.

I didn't take a picture of that hair, but I tell ya, it was damn awful.

What can I do? Of course I searched the internet. 

After searching for "male hairstyle,"I settled on one particular celebrity, TOP from Big Bang. He is a famous Korean rapper. I think he has a very distinctive style. 

 (Google image result for Top's hairstyle)

I picked a few options from here and tried them out on my character.

 

Hmm... mediocre. Maybe looked tooo young? I wasn't sure.

 

What the...

Baaaaaaa...

Oh, this one seemed better than previous hairstyles.

You see, if you change someone's hair his/her image really changes.

Shading process..

Trimming...

And the final product! 

I think he looks a bit stronger (?) and more masculine than my initial sketch, don't you?

I also gave him a beige jacket and a turtle-neck shirt.

Many, or most of the gang members who appear in Korean movies or dramas wear black suits (or white... and often outdated and unrefined).

Well, I thought that giving Hwangjae a bit of atypical attire would tell something about him--not really belonging to the gang he has been working for.

But then of course I will have to do a lot more things from now on to really construct a character. :)

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 7 A Street Vendor

For day 7 I designed a street vendor and his.. err...what is it called... stand.

I have both nostalgic and bad memories about visiting street vendors.

Bad things first: I had major stomachaches every time I bought food from vendors when I was in Toronto.

(Maybe I happened to buy something "odd" or I was reactive to some of the ingredients, I dunno :P)

But what I wanted in my story was the nostalgic side of it.

When I was living in Seoul, I liked to go to a town called Insa-dong (인사동) with my family. It is famous for shops selling various Asian antique items (usually art, which also included contemporary art). Some part of the town really emitted the "traditional" aura, and that was the part I liked the most.

(You can see amazing photographs of this amazing town here: http://blog.daum.net/tomatoagi/5532395)

My parents often bought me there some Korean taffy (엿?) from a taffy seller dressed in traditional Korean costume. I was not particularly fond of sweet things (and they are sweet), but I really liked getting stuffs there. It was usually in the evening that my families went there, so I could see the glimmers of colorful lights in the darkening sky. The vapors from nearby food stands and vents in the ground shadowed and revealed the whole scene in turns. It was mysterious to me. 

Old (뽕짝..) songs were played from somewhere. Sellers sung (or shouted) cadent phrases to invite customers. The big, old-fashioned scissors that the taffy seller used to cut taffy (and to attract customers) made weird sounds--between snapping and clanging, I think. Plus there were sounds of crowds chatting from everywhere. A number of cars that for some reason wanted to get into the street made honking noises. Together they numbed my ears and other senses. 

But I was having fun. I was nibbling taffy along with my siblings, my parents by our sides.

I didn't get to eat taffy that often. My family didn't go out together (to such a place) that often.

It was a treat, and it was like experiencing a different reality.

Maybe my memories are more or less constructed over the years based on my impression. :P

But the town was really imprinted in my memory.

God, wasn't I babbling too much. Going back to the street vendor!

Again I Tumbled, Googled, and Flickered, and gathered what I found out in Springpad.

(by the way, I like the newly-upgraded version of Springpad! I wonder if I can clip articles efficiently, too)

I also found out about this particular vending cart(?). 

It's a stand on a three-wheeled bicycle. I liked it. http://www.cuomo.kr/ 

The above website says that it is a new street culture from Europe.

I am not so sure about that. While I was searching for inspiration I found things like this in China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia as well... but anyway!

So I created a vending bicycle (?) for my story.

Its stand looks like a traditional Korean (or East Asian...), with a lot of fuzzy antique decorations around it -- bells, lanterns, umbrella, amulets, accessories, baskets, etc.

Link

And the owner himself does not look so........er... ordinary. 

"Out-of-space geeky charlatan" was my concept when I created this character.

His looks are as geeky as the stuffs he sells. He sells literally anything. He (more or less) steals goods from other stores in the town and sell them in outrageous prices. He also sells weird amulets, strange beverages, and.. bones. Sometimes he is witnessed selling high heels.

The beverage he sells here.

You can see more about this weird beverage here: 

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/doodle-day-day-2-3-profs-office-killer.html

Actually I created this character for another project few years ago, but since I gave up on that project for various reasons, I am glad that I can resurrect(?) him here. He is called "Kkengkkeng-i granpa."(깽깽이 할아버지) Kkengkkeng in Korea is somewhat like "yap yap" in English. It is the name of a dog who is very yappy and skinny. And the man is his owner.

The story I am working on right now (http://blog.naver.com/haejinsung) is a fantasy drama about eight people whose souls were suddenly switched. So I needed a few "mysterious" figures and places in my story. The guy and his stand above is one of them.

Maybe you have seen someone like this in streets. Maybe you have seen him and forgot about him.
Maybe he enchanted you to forget seeing him. Maybe he chooses to appear only certain time and place in front of certain people.
He is a mystery to me, a different reality rooted in this reality. Clouded in vapors, making clanging noises, humming strange tunes. Like my childhood memory of Insa-dong at night. :)

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 6 A Real Estate Agency

The place I designed in day 6 was a real estate agency.

I am currently living in Ontario, Canada, and I can see realtors' billboards anywhere--Aldridge and Sons, Barry and Carry, etc. Sometimes the billboards look dashing and the realtors look professional and trustworthy, but sometimes they are downright...ugly and the realtors look like charlatans with greedy smirks on their faces (as if saying, "Come on, my lambs, uncle will rob your sweet pockets for you (??)"). Well, at any rate, that is my impression of realtors based on billboards, commercials, and exterior of their agencies. (I've never actually consulted realtors :( )

But the realtors' places that I remember from my childhood in Seoul were rather different.
Of course there were big fancy offices in downtown. Near my home, however, were only a few small offices with a lot of shabby advertisements in the front and with a number of old men sitting idly on sofas and flats.
And I remember thinking, wow, what a boring job that would be.

I know, it is a kind of a stereotype based on a limited childhood experience. :P
But I thought that it would be fun if that image goes a bit further in my story.
(It is about eight people whose souls were suddenly switched... http://blog.naver.com/haejinsung)

(Photo from http://ysland.ysnet.kr/category/%EC%96%91%EC%82%B0%EB%B6%80%EB%8F%99%EC%82%B0%20%EA%B2%80%EC%83%89)

The town in my story would be on the boundaries of Seoul. It is by no means an impoverished part of the city, but it is a pretty much self-contained city where that time goes by slowly. Not much changes or happens in the town. And this real estate agency does not have much job to keep it busy.

Its owner, Mr. Park inherited this place from his father and grandfather who were also realtors. Thus the name of the agency is Park Real Estate Agency (Park Bok-deok-bang). Actually, bok-deok-bang is a rather ancient word. Nowadays hardly anyone uses it. But I thought that since the Parks have been doing it for three generations and they are very proud of it, well, what the heck.
Plus, Park Bok in Korean means "misfortune" or "ill-luck." What better name could there be for a house-finding agency? X)

The sketch of the sign.

It says "Park Real Estate Agency" "for 3 generations."

Well, in my story, it is a gathering place for middle-aged and old men who has not much to do. 

They come here to spend their time idly. Or busily. Because they gamble here.

But they each have a history of blowing off their fortune--more or less--due to gambling, so they are prohibited from big-time gambling by their wives and families. :P

But how could they possibly stop? So they came up with an alternative. 

They do very very very petty gambling. They bet 500 wons and 1000 wons (approximately 44 cents and 90 cents in CAD) on things like... what commercial would come after a TV show, or whether the next person who passes by the store is above 170cm.

 

Will the next ad be of Yun-A from Girls' Generation or Hyori Lee??!?! What a suspenseful gambling!!

(I just selected random advertisements from Google image..)

Yep, so one of my characters do this petty gambling here and gets an accident while joyfully leaving here with the money he earned. But he wants to come back again and again here. Even when his souls were switched and now he looks like a nerdy high school student. 

A real estate agency could also be useful when it comes to finding a place or a owner that pertains to the plot. ;P