sequential art project

link to my web album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hyungkyoon.kim/WeAreTooFull#

I had no idea what I was going to do; and even in class, I was just spitting out whatever I had in mind at the time. But as I just chilled and thought about what I was going to do, the idea of theme of "Death" was a little too plain; in fact, I could just stick some random pictures together and call them "My vision of Death" or something like that. So, I thought I'd pick some other topic that has always been bothering me, which is the fact that us humans are never satisfied with what we have. No matter what situation we are in, we want more of something (and everything), and we always have complaints, not content about what we already have. I titled my album "we are too full" precisely for that reason.

Basically, my idea was to put together pictures of those protesting, and of those who are starving, but for different reasons. The first five pictures are those protesting for democracy, Vietnam war, Somalian war, Chinese human rights, and Gaza war, respectively. The next five pictures, which are supposed to form contrast, are those who are protesting for animal rights, a mockery of world peace, some random web figures, MTV and against illegal immigrants, and especially in the last picture, the fact that the people are laughing is absolutely outrageous. Old supremacists who have nothing better to do but to laugh at the efforts of the immigrants, who came to United States looking for some hope of achieving a decent life. The next five are pictures of those who are dying from starvation due to lack of food, such as those north Korean kids, African kids, and those who were starved by concentration camps during holocaust. The last five, which should form contrast, are people who are anorexic, who reject food that are abundant in the society, and cause problem by encouraging those around them to be like them as well, harming their health in the process. Models and those actions of sticking finger down the throat are truly shocking, especially compared to the previous five pictures of people who die because they don't have anything to eat.

The readings so far have not really affected what I wanted to do or the way I wanted to do it; may be only thing that I really took away and applied to this project from the reading was from the comic strip we read, where it talked about how everything is considered to be "icon." I thought that these pictures could be considered as "icons" too- icons for humanity that will never be satisfied with what is already with them. Some will argue that this is how our civilization has advanced- our hunger to have a better life, and I agree. But at the same time, doing stupid protests for causes that do not really advance human civilization, or starving oneself for no reason do not really have any justification based on such argument.

All in all, I enjoyed doing this project- it was first time that I got a chance to try to make an argument with sequence of pictures, and I must admit, it was kind of cool.