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It really is all about family

2/22/2016

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Asian family tree
As the lunar new year holiday concluded this past weekend, I will conclude this series talking about Asian families. Many perceived differences come in the ways we express or apply our values which, in and of themselves, are universally similar.

The Asian family hierarchy begins with the oldest generation. These members are the most revered, because of the wisdom they often hold in the years of life they have acquired. I think we all can agree that the older we get, the smarter we get. Therefore, during holidays and other family celebrations, the oldest members of the family are paid respect in the form of a prayer and offering, and are given whether they are alive or have passed on.

The nuclear family consists of parents and their children, and each member has certain expectations and obligations to the other.

Parents protect, advocate for, and give their children the personal tools needed to succeed. Parents must be their children’s educators, their protectors, their guidance counselors; in effect, their job is to arm them with the coping skills they will need to live independently in a very complex world. The perception of Asian culture is that of harshness and that Asian parents only value success. While it’s true that Asians value success, when looking at it from a different perspective, it is also true that they simply do not believe it is in their child’s power to FAIL.

Children in return are expected to contribute to the family by behaving, listening, and helping out where possible. Children should be respectful of their parents, not take for granted what is given, and should work hard for the opportunities their parents are giving them.

Asian families are frankly like any family. We fight amongst ourselves, and sometimes don’t even like each other. What is inherent is that every generation interacts and is involved in family dynamics to move the family forward into the future. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Happy New Year everyone! May the year of the monkey bring us all good luck, good health, prosperity, and good food!

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The new year, dragons, rain, firecrackers, and lots of luck

2/19/2016

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Lunar new year symbols, dragon, firecrackers, lanterns
Now, let’s talk about the most important holiday that many Asian cultures celebrate: The Lunar New Year.

The rise of the Chinese in the world economy has increased the western world’s awareness of the mass migration that the Chinese undertake from the cities where they work to the country where their families live. 

This holiday of dragon dances, firecrackers, superstitions and symbolic foods, is highly scripted. On each day of the 15 days, certain family members are honored, and certain foods are eaten. Superstitions surrounding the cleaning of the house, preparing and displaying the food offerings to ancestors, and meal preparation and presentation are strictly followed, so as not to introduce an opportunity for bad luck of any kind (e.g. no money, no children, no family happiness) for the coming year.

The holiday period ends in the Lantern festival, which is steeped in mythological origin. It was said that a beautiful bird from heaven was destroyed by villagers in a village. The Jade Emperor saw this and condemned the village to be destroyed.

His daughter, the princess, took pity and tipped the villagers’ off to their fate. An old man passing through the village wisely advised them to hang lanterns, burn fires, and set off fireworks, so that from the sky above, the village looked to already be engulfed in flames. So the Jade Emperor left the village alone thinking it to be destroyed, and the village was saved!

This tale may sound a little corny, but many traditions, western or eastern, are rich in these captivating tales. The themes behind celebrations are universal regardless of WHO we are: life, our respective cultures, and to hope for a good future. The differences come in HOW we do it, so in the end, does it matter if I celebrate by eating chicken feet, or chicken drumsticks? The bottom line is that we all celebrate inherently for the same reasons.

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Loose (noodle) ends

2/17/2016

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Lunar New Year bad luck symbols, white
So, what food would NOT be eaten during the Lunar New Year celebrations? It has to do with a color that is associated with death for many Asian Cultures. Guesses included eggs, flour, and, er, SNOW (Um, we don't really EAT snow, though it's acceptable to do so!). This food is white, or very pale beige....

The answer is tofu. But not ALL tofu is bad luck. Just the plain, uncooked variety. There are some tofus, like the fermented stuff, that is brown on the outside and pressed in a way to give it much more density, that is actually considered lucky, because it has the same shape as money! Gosh, it's seems like it's ALL about the looks, eh?


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Photoshop is HIGH MAINTENANCE.

2/16/2016

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Picture
Let’s finish up our discussion on Illustrator versus Photoshop before we get back to the process of self-publishing.

In the beginning, Illustrator was a great 2D graphics tool. In graduate school, I learned to use it as a set-up to my illustrations. This illustrator file could be brought into Photoshop, where I could then do the “real” painting, adding form through highlights, core and cast shadows, and airbrushing in all the beautiful variations in color that occur when light hits an object. But what happens when I needed to change, say, the color of an object in the image?

Because we used Photoshop in place of traditional painting, we used the tools in the same way we’d do so with traditional techniques, like airbrush. First, I’d make a frisket, which is like a stencil; in Photoshop this was called a mask. Then, I’d adhere the frisket on my board, or, make a selection in Photoshop. Finally, I’d grab my airbrush, or airbrush tool, pour my paint into the reservoir, or select it in the color palette, and then paint. Excellent!

Now, traditionally, if I want to erase what I’ve done and re-paint it, I’d have to attempt to erase it without damaging the surface of the medium (paper, canvas, illustration board). Bad things happen when the medium’s surface is damaged, like uncontrollable bleeding and splotchy patches. Then I’d need to clean out my airbrush reservoir, re-apply my frisket, and finally re-paint the new colors.

Photoshop makes this process much easier, since I can specifically select the area I want to erase with the mask I had already created, and erase that area. Then, with that area still selected, I can re-airbrush all the bumps and dips on the surface, all the highlights, core and cast shadows, and reflected lights to render that surface to look real. Kind of a pain, but still easier than traditional.

In contrast, with Illustrator I can also create these undulations, core and cast shadows and highlights using shapes. If I need to change colors, it was a matter of selecting the shape, and then clicking on the new color in the swatch palette. And scene.

Illustrator, from the beginning, was my choice, because I just KNEW that I would be making plenty of changes to the illustrations, the color scheme, the background colors and textures, the layout, everything.

Next up, we’ll get back to the specific production technicalities with gutters!
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Lunar New Year festivities are all about lucky eating

2/12/2016

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Lunar New Year lucky foods
Next up is my favorite topic: how Asian cultures use food in celebrations. Foods selected to be eaten during the Lunar New Year have Chinese names that sound similar to the Chinese words for luck, fortune, fertility, prosperity, happiness, etc. It's a traditional way to wish for luck, prosperity, good health, and family happiness, by surrounding yourself with things that sound like those words.

For instance, the word for fish sounds similar to “surplus” or “excess,” and therefore, fish is featured heavily during the holidays. The fish is prepared whole, with its head pointed towards guests or elders. It is presented as a last course and NOT meant to be completely consumed, for having leftover fish symbolizes the continual abundance of food throughout the year.

The word for pomelo, a grapefruit-like fruit, sounds similar to the verb, “to have,” and thus represents fertility.  

The shape or color of food itself can also lend meaning. For example, the dumpling shape is similar to ancient gold and silver ingots.

And long skinny noodles symbolize a long life, thus noodle strands are never cut before cooking!

Some foods look AND sound lucky. Oranges are golden and sunny in color, and thus represent good fortune. But its name also sounds like the word for “success.”

And the steamed, sweet, sticky rice cake called “nian-gao” symbolizes a rich, sweet life because it is rich and sweet. Furthermore, the name sounds like the phrase, “Getting higher year by year,” and thus signifies growth in prosperity.

Finally, there’s shrimp and chicken. Shrimp symbolize liveliness, while a whole chicken (a lot of foods are served whole to symbolize unity in the family) is thought to be symbolic of the dragon and the phoenix combined. It represents happiness in marriage and family, prosperity and joy.

So, can anyone guess what might NOT be served during the Lunar New Year? A hint: it’s based on an unlucky wedding dress color I mentioned in the previous post!

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Happy New Year!

2/9/2016

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Picture
No, I'm NOT 1.5 months late in wishing you a happy new year. But I am a day late in ushering in the year of the monkey! So, Happy beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday!

I want to take advantage to talk about some unique cultural distinctions in holidays, superstitions and food. Too often, these differences make us feel like the cultural gulf is too wide, for just as westerners are accustomed to wearing a white wedding gown to symbolize purity and chastity, wearing white symbolizes death in certain Asian cultures. It’s simply a difference, and should NOT separate, but rather define, our individual heritages.

I’ll start off with the significance of dragons (I think it appropriate, yes?) in the Chinese culture in particular. The Chinese believed their people were the "descendants of the dragon,” and since Centipede Dragon is half-DRAGON, this is a logical place to start.

The dragon is an amalgamation of body parts from nine animals: a deer, a camel, the devil (that’s no animal!), a snake, a large cockle, a carp, an eagle, a tiger and an ox.

The dragon is symbolic of kindness, friendliness, wisdom and is a protector. It is the ultimate symbol of good fortune.

Dragons were thought to control when and where rain would fall, and hence, the success of crop growth. With strength in its tail, dragons could control floods with one mighty smack upon a river bed!

And finally, the coming of two dragons together in opposite directions form the yin yang sign, a sign marking eternity.

During the Lunar New Year celebration, firecrackers are thrown at the feet of dragon puppets during parades to keep the dragons awake in order to continue bringing good fortune throughout the coming year.

Next post will talk about food traditions!

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Advantage...Illustrator

2/2/2016

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Picture
So, the question I posed last post was, why did I choose to make my drawings in Adobe Illustrator versus Adobe Photoshop?

The obvious answer is that I had no way of knowing that in the production of the book (since I never expected to self-publish), that transparencies would cause such a headache. But what I’ve learned in being an Illustrator for almost 2 decades now, is that the flexibility with Adobe Illustrator far exceeds that of Photoshop. So when time is the essence, as well as the ability of an illustration to be tailored to another use, well, Illustrator wins out.

First, let’s talk about scalability, using this very crude example of what happens when you try to blow up the size of a small picture originally created in Photoshop. We learned before that Photoshop stores the image as pixels in a grid. If the original picture was small, say 1 inch by 1 inch, and you set your document at 100 dpi, that means within that 1x1 inch square, you have 100 pixels of information. The more pixels you pack into that square, the better detail and more subtlety in color shifts and changes you’ll achieve. But you’ll also have a much bigger file to save!

Now, if you decide to make that picture 2x2 or 3x3 inches, you have to distribute those 100 pixels over a canvas that is now much larger than your original 1x1 inch canvas. So original pixels #3 and 4 that used to be next to each other now have empty space in between them.

What Photoshop then does is uses a clever algorithm to make up the pixel color in between each original pixel. So in this image, each original pixel is ideally placed in the center of the now much enlarged grid square. With all the empty space in between each original pixel, the algorithm looks at the next original pixel in closest proximity to the first one, and fills in each empty pixel space in between with a color that is also “in between” the colors of each original pixel. Looking at pixel #3, the color of each pixel moving left toward pixel #2 becomes lighter, to match the pixel color in #2. In moving right, the pixels in grids #3 and 4 are the same color, so, the pixels in between are also the same color. The algorithm is much more clever though, because it has to sample the original pixels in closest proximity in ALL directions. Hence, it “recreates” the shifts in color in this way.

But the algorithm isn’t perfect either, and therefore, often as good as the theory sounds, the results are not so pretty. Sometimes the result is muddiness, fuzziness, and just a lot of noise within the picture. Not so with Illustrator, which uses math formulas to store its information and is therefore not affected quality-wise when you want to scale up or down.

One point for Illustrator!

Next, we’ll talk about what happens when we try to change the image itself.
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    Alice Y. Chen

    is the author of Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature, the first of a series of children's picture books for ages 3-7 (and up).

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