#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

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 5 Crossroads

The end of the term can be crazy. When I mean crazy I mean exhausting. 

And because I have been baaaaaing (?) and ughhhing (?) due to exhaustion all weekend, 

I am a little bit behind in posting my daily projects. I will try to catch up as much as possible. :) 

But I did work on my story everyday. (http://blog.naver.com/haejinsung) Even for a little bit of time.

Below left is my brainstorming note on Thursday. 

I was excited that I finished my winter classes and an exam, so I talked with my brother about my story till... well, till the sun came up in the morning. Which was... highly beneficial for my story but equally damaging for my biorhythm. :P

Anyway, project #6 day 5's design was crossroads.

(Photo:http://april5.tistory.com/7)

I am fascinated by the relationship between a specific space and people. That's why I've been designing places within my story. Crossroads can be all the more interesting because it is where people intersect. 

All kinds of people who have nothing to do with other have to meet in some way or another.

And the reason that those people are in crossroads tells us something about their lives. Even when they are just passing by, they are here because they need to or have to do something here, right?

Then of course, the word "crossroad" can be used to describe our big moments in life. :P

So I have tumbled, Googled and searched Google map to see a picture of what a crossroads looks like (in Korea, for that is where this story is staged) and to look for inspirations.

The crossroads in my story is very significant, both as a physical space and as a metaphor. 

It is where the first pivotal event takes place and... due to that accident the souls of my eight characters are switched. 

They were all there in that specific moment for a reason. That is why it is important to construct the space around the crossroads, the places that my characters were or intended to go. And in some cases those places have special meaning to them.

Some of the spaces around the crossroads that I designed so far include:

Flower shop ("Pansy Flower Shop")

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/04/6-designing-place-day-day-1-flower-shop.html

Convenience store

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/04/6-designing-place-day-day-2-convenience.html

And a mysterious bookstore ("A House Made of Books")

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/04/6-designing-place-day-day-4-mysterious.html

Day 6's project (that I will write shortly after this) adds another space, the real estate agency.
Designing these places are so captivating, I hope I won't get too carried a way! X)


http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 4 A Mysterious Bookstore

In Day 4, I designed a bookstore.

Since I am dealing with a fantasy drama (http://blog.naver.com/haejin.sung), I wanted a place that emits a mysterious aura. 

I was brainstorming what kind of place would be nice, then my big brother told me about a bookstore that he went once with my Mom when he was young. It was a weird used bookstore, he said, full of books piled up anywhere randomly.

That was it. I needed a weird bookstore that is full of old books and also records, tapes, videos(?), and other miscellaneous stuffs.

I found out about this amazing bookstore in Venice: Acqua Alta Libreria.

(Photos from http://tinatarnoff.typepad.com/thought_patterns/bookstores/)

It has books piled up in a bathtub and boat, and they are piled up in such a hazardously beautiful way!

I will definitely want to go to this place once I land in Venice one day fufufu.

So the below is a preliminary sketch of my bookstore ("A House Made of Books"="책으로 만든 집").
It is a store in the corner of a town that not many gets to discover.
I wanted a bookstore with a very complex structure--2nd floor, 1.5 floor, 3rd floor, ladders, spiral stairs, corners after corners, couches made of books, and columns and shelves stuck with all kinds of vintage (and/or trashy) objects. It would be like a maze and a whole world in itself. Like a magic. That smells of old books.

So I made characters who own the place and animals who live here (two cats, named Schopenhauer and Bacon :P, seven goldfishes, and three birds).

It was immensely delightful and (thus?) rather effortless to design such a place. It would be my Acqua Alta Libreria in a Korean town.

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 3 A Corridor Wall

Hmm. So I am a few days behind posting. It's been so crazy with my end-of-the-term exam. :P

Though I didn't have time to post, I did manage to do the project itself everyday. :)

Here is Wednesday's project. 

The place I imaged this day is the corridor wall of the lodgings that some of my characters for story #85 reside.

I do not know the exact counterpart for the Korean word "하숙집". The Korean-English dictionary I have says that it is lodgings. In my story, the place is mainly occupied by high school students whose homes are far away from the school they attend.

I made a preliminary design of the place in Mar 16. (Seems like it's such a long time ago.. =.=)

Now, I have a little different idea of what this place looks like in my head. But anyway, it still has a corridor.

And I wanted that space to have a special function, because it is the place that the characters who live here, in particular Ji-Eun and Soo-Oh, bump into each other. And those bumps should be interesting.

And I thought, well, walls could play some role in there. Or they could just make that space more interesting.

Characters who reside here:

Soo-Oh 장수오

Details here: http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/5-doodle-day-day-12-drawing-character.html 

Ji-Eun 탁지은

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/5-doodle-day-day-1-girl-in-blue-soo-oh.html)

Jae-Yong 임재용 (the boy on the right)

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/5-doodle-day-imaging-characters-ii.html

 And Won-Seok 선우원석, the guy that Ji-Eun has a crush on. He lives in the same unit as Soo-Oh.

http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/5-doodle-day-day-13-another-character.html

So. The wall. As far as I know, corridor walls in lodgings or any apartment seldom have any decorations. They are simply walls.

But Ji-Eun is an artist. Her specialty is miniature art, but she does small installation arts around the town and makes props for school festivals and postcards and other things as well.

(the photo in the bottom left of the page shows manholes in the streets, painted by artists. I thought it was ingenious and delightful. And it struck me as something that Ji-Eun would do--installing small artworks in places that people usually do not care or ignore and make them look)

I wondered if she could also paint walls. ...Why not?

Let's make the building manager or owner allow her to paint the walls of the place in return for reducing the  fee she pays every month. ;)

After some tumbling, googling, and flickering, I settled on illusionistic wall painting.
The below are some examples of illusionistic art.

What intrigues me about illusionistic wall (and street) paintings is that it gives us dream-like experience of seeing or being in another space. I wanted Ji-Eun (and her accomplice (?) artist) to paint in the walls of the corridors a view into another world. If you had been seeing white plaster wall for years, then one day find yourself standing in front of a different world, I am sure you will stop and look into it.

Well, of course, the content of the illusionistic painting would also be important.
For now I am considering a few options. One is that an artist could paint something that she had seen somewhere without remembering or knowing what it is. Another thing is that, you should never piss an artist. She could include you in her art and mock you for eternity. ;P

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 2 A Convenience Store

And today's place is: a convenience store!

It's been a while since I've been to one. :(

Well, but CVS is a necessary part of moder.. well, at least urban life in Korea! 

A town without it is absolutely unimaginable!

So I googled again and read stuffs about it--what it does, what it sells, who comes when, and also about the difficulties of working there and having to deal with the caprice and ill-manners of customers, especially at night time. X( 

I made the below character improvisationally.

I needed someone working there, I didn't want it to be anybody.

I had someone in mind for the manager. He is a rather passive man who can be.. well, messed around by upset or naughty customers. Then what I needed next was of course the opposite of him.

Someone that cannot be messed around.

So here she is, the temporary worker, Nari Gong (23). Her character in one word: A PUNK.

Nari is a name for a flower (below).

Not.. really fit (?) for a punk she looks like. But she likes her name. She dyed her hair in this bright orange color. X)

So, she is huge, I mean, tall and well built-up. She is not unkind, but she looks pretty scary to other people....
She looks straight into your eyes when she says in her low and coarse voice, "hullo..." "thank you..." and "good bye...". And, in part because of her height and her heels (she wears above-knee leather boots), she looks down at you with her glaring eyes! Imagine you are an underage trying to get a cigarette. She would not let that happen. No chance at all.

But of course, she is more than what you see. She enjoys reading when she is not busy with her work. Her favorites are travel books with, err... self-introspective aspects in them. :)
And she is very observant, though she doesn't look so, and have a pretty good memory.
So she is not simply an interesting extra character in my story.
A convenience store is where people from vastly different backgrounds intersect. And there she is, observing the network of people revolving around it.
Thus she is one of those holding.. hmm, if you may call it, hidden keys that can unlock the secrets in my characters and plot.

One complaint I have about this week's project is that it is unintentionally time-consuming. :/
Any project would, though.
I need to balance my study, story, and health...

#6. Designing A Place A Day - Day 1 A Flower Shop

For this week's project, I chose to design a place a day for my new story project. (http://blog.naver.com/haejinsung)

I chose it because I thought it would not be so time-consuming. How naive of me.

It took about one hour to collect information and inspirational images concerning that place

and more than thirty minutes filling in the place and fitting it into my story.

:P (when shall I study...) 

But other than that, it was a tremendously enjoyable exercise. 

If you are a writer or aspire to be a writer like me, please try. You won't regret it. :)

The first place that I designed was a flower shop.

A few of my characters like flowers and use flowers for various reasons--art, hobby, decoration, as a present for one's wife or to flatter and flirt with girls, etc.

It is a place that many, if not almost all, of my characters pass by, enter, and interact with each other. Therefore it is a place that we can peep into their lifestyle, history, and secrets.

So, again, I tumbled and googled for information and images about flower shops.

What would I do without Google, Tumblr, and Springpad? :/

(above says: "A gathering place for:" Some characters are regular, some occasional visitors, some just window shoppers. And these characters, as the story advances, come and go and interact differently)

I made notes and began constructing the space a bit further.
Actually, I gathered information yesterday and scribbled down my notes and doodles today, so I think I forgot some of my ideas about it.... I hope I'll remember them. :P

Here is my florist. I imagined her to be a bright, smiling middle-aged woman with a chubby and matronly constitution. Her name is Baek-Hap Nam (Baek-Hap in Korean is Lily). She loves flowers and loves wearing clothes with floral patterns. *_*

And I also drew a cat in the shop. He is one big ugly lazy fatty kitty (actually, not a kitty; he is kinda old). His thick, white whiskers and eyebrows fall down like an the beard of.. well, an ill-tempered wizard. :P
His name, by the way, is PANSY. (~~the flower, ye know~~) What a cute name it would be, the florist lady thought when she picked him up on the street several years ago. What an unsuitable name for me, the cat may have thought then.
Perhaps that is why he doesn't respond when the lady calls him "Pansy~". He just ignores her and turns his head away and cuddles up his tail.

He responds, though, when called "BONAPARTE." (~~the dictator, or whatever he was, Napoleon, ye know~~) Ji-Eun calls him that way.
Ji-Eun is a regular in this shop because she makes miniature art with flowers. She (her image can be seen here: http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/5-doodle-day-day-12-drawing-character.html) is the only one who can handle this bad kitty. :)

By the way, I think this is probably the first time that I tried to draw a.. cat... (I mean, not cat emoticons)

#5. A Doodle A Day - Day 14 Comparison Pair I

Hullo, so it's been a while that I doodled with so little effort or concentration.

Well, it's just a doodle, so why not? XP

This is a comparison between Ji-Eun and Soo-Oh, two of my protagonists for my new story project (http://blog.naver.com/haejinsung). 

This is what they are like in school.

Ji-Eun is emanating a dark~ gloomy~ aura around her that her peers like to tease.

Soo-Oh is like a shining prince (can't believe I said that word..) that attract not only girls but also boys.

Outside school, they are pretty different in their private lives. Ji-Eun dresses up the way she wants and scavenge (?) the street for things she would like to use for her miniature art. Detailed photos, working progress and explanations can be seen in this post >> http://projectmacy365.blogspot.ca/2012/03/5-doodle-day-day-12-drawing-character.html 

Soo-Oh, on the other hand (I haven't drawn that yet) is not a very shining prince outside school. I say a prodigal son is more likely.....

Kinda like this, (though settings are different, the above painting is a Dutch Baroque painting by Honthorst) a debauched young man. But Soo-Oh should NOT be a stereotypical prodigal son. It would be boring. ;)