[Repost] “Unreliable” Dreams, Reliable Creations: The Story of the Creation of “Lord of the Flies”

A great sto­ry! An unre­al­is­tic but touch­ing dream ^_^Orig­i­nal address:“Unre­li­able” Dreams, Reli­able Cre­ations: The Cre­ation Sto­ry of “Lord of the Flies“author:San­lian Pic­ture Book Muse­um
On the 23rd, Tian Yu, the author of “Lord of the Flies”, held an exchange and sign­ing ses­sion with read­ers at the Kubrick Book­store in Bei­jing. Dur­ing the one and a half hour exchange, Tian Yu talked freely about his inex­tri­ca­ble bond with pic­ture books, the process of the cre­ation of the sto­ry of “Lord of the Flies”, and also gave his inter­pre­ta­tion of the sto­ry of “Lord of the Flies”.
The fol­low­ing is a par­tial tran­script.
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The Cre­ation Sto­ry of Lord of the Flies
 



Where did “Lord of the Flies” come from?

Let’s first talk about the sto­ry itself. I’m not sure how you feel after hear­ing it, so I’ve sim­u­lat­ed it myself as an audi­ence mem­ber: I think it’s a very sim­ple sto­ry, with­out much of a strong rhythm. Most of the sto­ry con­sists of the boy pon­der­ing and prac­tic­ing in the bath­room. Only in the mid­dle of the sto­ry does it expe­ri­ence some sub­tle ups and downs, with more peo­ple involved, and final­ly reach­ing its cli­max with the Lord of the Flies per­for­mance, but there the sto­ry abrupt­ly ends.

Lord of the Flies is a pic­ture book sto­ry. We hear the term “pic­ture book” more and more often these days, but when we were lit­tle, we did­n’t have pic­ture books. We only lis­tened to sto­ries and read com­ic books. Lat­er, pic­ture books came into being, and now they are also called illus­trat­ed books.

Before I start­ed draw­ing pic­ture books, I was an artist, paint­ing many oil paint­ings. Lat­er, I decid­ed to ded­i­cate myself to pic­ture book cre­ation, and now my entire life is essen­tial­ly cen­tered around them. This is large­ly due to Mr. Yang Zhong from the Pic­ture Book Cre­ation Stu­dio and my good friend, the young artist Man Tao. Five years ago, Man Tao and I were chat­ting when the word “pic­ture book” sud­den­ly came up. At the time, we con­sid­ered pic­ture books to be plot-based, artist-illus­trat­ed, art books. My pri­ma­ry attrac­tion when read­ing pic­ture books was their plot-based, stress-free nature. Com­pared to pure art, which requires a lot of con­sid­er­a­tion, these pic­ture books sim­ply brought joy to my heart, which cap­ti­vat­ed me. Because of my love for pic­ture books, Man Tao and I met Mr. Yang Zhong from the Pic­ture Book Cre­ation Stu­dio and sub­se­quent­ly vis­it­ed his stu­dio.

I was still quite ner­vous at the time, but I read a lot of won­der­ful pic­ture books in the stu­dio. Teacher Yang even read aloud to me: “Pic­ture Book Child” by Ryo­ji Arai. That night, I was com­plete­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by pic­ture books. I felt like I had final­ly found a job I could ful­ly devote myself to after all these years. After return­ing home, I found many more pic­ture books to read and cher­ished every oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act with Teacher Yang.

After that, I began teach­ing at a pic­ture book cre­ation stu­dio. At the sug­ges­tion of Yang Zhong and Xiang Hua, I had the idea of cre­at­ing my own pic­ture book. I was thrilled: Could I real­ly cre­ate my own pic­ture book? But I also had a lot of con­cerns. Was I tru­ly pro­fes­sion­al enough to cre­ate my own pic­ture book? Although I had a pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, I did­n’t under­stand pic­ture books well enough: Could I sim­ply love pic­ture books and be able to cre­ate them?

But I soon over­came this hur­dle, thanks to the encour­age­ment of Teach­ers Yang and Xiang Hua. Now the ques­tion I need­ed to think about was: What kind of sto­ry should I draw for my first pic­ture book? …

Ulti­mate­ly, I chose “Lord of the Flies.” While I deeply enjoy dra­mat­ic sto­ries, I chose the sim­ple, peace­ful tale of “Lord of the Flies” for a rea­son: first, it had been in my mind for a very long time, dat­ing back to my child­hood. Back then, I lived on the ground floor of a tube-shaped build­ing, with a mas­sive garbage dump right out­side our door. My moth­er would lock me in while she went to work and give me a task: swat all the flies in the house before she got home. So, I began to seri­ous­ly hone in on fly-swat­ting tech­niques: I’d pre­pare a piece of white paper for draw­ing, observe the flies’ flight, and then swat them, try­ing not to explode them so I could dis­play them on the paper as tro­phies to show my moth­er. Ini­tial­ly, my moth­er praised me for my suc­cess­es, and I was so inspired that I took it upon myself to exter­mi­nate the flies in our house. Lat­er, to expand my efforts, I even swat­ted flies from the garbage dump out­side. The sheer vol­ume of flies made my moth­er sick. This reac­tion res­onat­ed deeply with me, and from then on, swat­ting flies became more than just a pur­suit. But I real­ly thought about what it would feel like if my moth­er came home and saw me swat­ting a fly in mid-flight. I even imag­ined using some­thing larg­er, like a news­pa­per, to swat a fly in mid-flight. Lat­er, when I attend­ed the Affil­i­at­ed High School of the Cen­tral Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Bei­jing, I became par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in film. This mem­o­ry inspired me to write down the ini­tial out­line of “Lord of the Flies” and even turned it into a short screen­play, though it nev­er got made. Now, when I think about writ­ing a pic­ture book, this sto­ry imme­di­ate­ly springs to mind. I tried to tell it to Teach­ers Yang and Xiang Hua, and I was so excit­ed, but I did­n’t have an end­ing. They gave me great encour­age­ment, and I pol­ished the sto­ry, so I start­ed writ­ing.
 
How do I draw the Lord of the Flies in my mind?
Now the sec­ond ques­tion aris­es: what method should I use to express this sto­ry?

I brought some sketch­es with me today. This large port­fo­lio is filled with draw­ings: some depic­tions of Lord of the Flies, oth­ers exper­i­men­tal scenes cre­at­ed with acrylics. I con­sid­ered many approach­es, but nev­er start­ed draw­ing, unsure which would best suit the sto­ry. Then, Teacher Yang enlight­ened me. She said, “Just do what feels most com­fort­able to you. No mat­ter what, start draw­ing.” She told me to for­get about shot-by-shot, struc­ture, and oth­er ele­ments and just start draw­ing. I’d writ­ten sev­er­al ver­sions of the Lord of the Flies text, but I still felt the writ­ing was­n’t good enough. Teacher Yang sug­gest­ed I put the words aside and start with the pic­tures, because the sto­ry itself was clear, and the pic­tures would speak for them­selves. I first set­tled on the char­ac­ter of Lord of the Flies, and once that was set­tled, the style I want­ed to draw grad­u­al­ly took shape. At the time, besides teach­ing, I also had oth­er duties, so I found pic­ture book cre­ation to be my most relax­ing and enjoy­able way to de-stress. So, I worked on Lord of the Flies while con­tin­u­ing my oth­er work, even when I felt tired from oth­er tasks.

As I thought about this, many small sketch­es emerged, and many images in my mind appeared on paper. I did­n’t over­think it, because if I kept hold­ing a stan­dard in my mind and com­par­ing it to the var­i­ous paint­ings of the mas­ters, I would be stuck. So I start­ed by sketch­ing the hap­pi­est, most impul­sive, and most vivid scenes, until I had a final draft. I did­n’t use pen­cils to start with, but direct­ly with a pen. This draw­ing is a scene from the Lord of the Flies con­ven­tion, because I real­ly want­ed to see how peo­ple would react when they saw Lord of the Flies per­form his amaz­ing tricks. I drew this in a friend’s stu­dio, where there were many chil­dren, who served as mod­els for the char­ac­ters in my draw­ing. I took many pho­tos and added details of the imag­i­nary scene based on them. Then came the sec­ond draw­ing. This sec­ond draw­ing is also about the Lord of the Flies con­ven­tion. Because I did­n’t want the draw­ings to be bor­ing, I incor­po­rat­ed many of my favorite fan­ta­sy char­ac­ters into the draw­ing, such as Cap­tain Jack Spar­row, Peter Pan, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, and so on. After I fin­ished the draw­ings, I showed them to Teacher Yang and Teacher Xiang Hua, but I was still a lit­tle ner­vous, won­der­ing if they would make it into the pic­ture book. Of course I was inspired by the result, and the way to draw Lord of the Flies was com­plete­ly final­ized.

I also con­sid­ered some typo­graph­i­cal fac­tors dur­ing the draw­ing process. The final image allows the read­er to direct­ly see a pic­ture with typo­graph­ic effects. Although I don’t under­stand typog­ra­phy, I know how to draw, and I can design the typo­graph­ic effects based on visu­al effects, such as the addi­tion and place­ment of many small com­po­nents, and the final light­ing and shad­ow effects. So I just drew the typog­ra­phy direct­ly.

By the time I fin­ished my third paint­ing, I’d become enam­ored with the “mat-weav­ing” tech­nique read­ers had com­ment­ed on. Some peo­ple have asked if I enjoy this tech­nique. My answer is no. I chose it because, first, it’s very sooth­ing. Sec­ond­ly, I remem­ber as a child using the toi­lets with their cross-pat­terned win­dows. At noon, sun­light streamed through, and dust par­ti­cles drift­ed in the sun­light. This left a last­ing impres­sion. Ini­tial­ly, I intend­ed to use this tech­nique to cap­ture the feel­ing of dust drift­ing in the sun­light, but as I pro­gressed, I came to love it. I felt that this lev­el of detail allowed me to con­nect with the Lord of the Flies in the sto­ry. By paint­ing these line-based back­grounds, I felt a con­nec­tion with the Lord: he spent his days con­tem­plat­ing how to swat flies, and I was draw­ing these lines every day. We felt a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, most of my back­grounds now fea­ture a large num­ber of lines, and I’ve even redrawn many of my paint­ings to empha­size this. These lines real­ly hold the image togeth­er, and I tru­ly enjoy the feel­ing of work­ing with lines.

When we held an exhi­bi­tion at the Sheng­shi Tiankong Art Muse­um this year, I cre­at­ed a col­or proof of the then-unpub­lished Lord of the Flies. Many of the images fea­tured sub­tle col­ors. Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood and Peter Pan were clear­ly vis­i­ble on that page. How­ev­er, the final pub­lished book was in black and white, due to a num­ber of pub­lish­ing con­sid­er­a­tions: there’s a dis­crep­an­cy between print­ed col­or and com­put­er col­or­ing, and the col­or­ing made the first half of the sto­ry seem rather depress­ing, while black and white eas­i­ly revealed the hand-drawn brush­strokes.

Com­bined with the pric­ing feed­back I gath­ered from this sam­ple book, Lord of the Flies opt­ed for a paper­back for­mat for its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion. I did­n’t want my first book to be so expen­sive, and after recall­ing many of my own read­ing expe­ri­ences, I decid­ed that a paper­back bind­ing would be the most con­ducive to read­ing. The offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion still required care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the mar­ket and read­ers’ price points.
 
The Secret in Lord of the Flies

The key word I want to share with you is “secret.” Every­one has their own inter­pre­ta­tion of the same thing. As an author, why did I allow my first pic­ture book to be so sim­ple and flat in terms of sto­ry­telling? Because beyond the sim­ple text, the images in “Lord of the Flies” also hide sev­er­al “secrets.”

Why is this book “ded­i­cat­ed to those dreams that have nev­er been real­ized”? First, look at this pic­ture in the book. There’s a row of chil­dren stand­ing there. I tried to make them inter­est­ing, like the “four-bar” char­ac­ter, the lit­tle fly, the child in the cow cos­tume, the cool kid with the back­pack strap tied around his head, and the team leader with a very fash­ion­able back­pack. Only the Lord of the Flies is fac­ing us.

Why did I draw the first pic­ture of the sto­ry like this? I believe pic­ture book authors don’t just start draw­ing right after receiv­ing a sto­ry. As authors, they should have a deep­er under­stand­ing of the sto­ry. Take the Lord of the Flies in the sto­ry. He stays in the bath­room, obsessed with swat­ting flies. There must be a rea­son for this: per­haps he’s lone­ly, or per­haps he’s faced some­thing in real life. I’ve cer­tain­ly encoun­tered peo­ple like him in my own life, and I’ve seen sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions in my own life, but nev­er quite as exag­ger­at­ed as in the sto­ry. I won­dered how an adult might under­stand a lone­ly child. So I tried to think about whether there were moments in my child­hood when I felt out of place, alien­at­ed, and alone. But no mat­ter how I thought about it, time always soft­ened those feel­ings of lone­li­ness. Is this inner lone­li­ness, per­haps a sense of resent­ment or even avoid­ance, some­thing we impose on our­selves as chil­dren? Is it a reluc­tance to fit in? I want­ed to visu­al­ly express this feel­ing of look­ing back on child­hood as an adult, so the pic­ture shows a row of chil­dren stand­ing in a line, but only the Lord of the Flies is fac­ing a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. I want­ed to con­vey that he him­self cre­at­ed this lone­ly begin­ning. Now that you have cho­sen how to start the sto­ry, you can move on.

In the sec­ond pic­ture, the oth­er chil­dren dis­ap­pear, the back­ground appears, but the pro­tag­o­nist’s posi­tion remains unchanged. We enter his world. He stands in the shad­ows, yet all he needs to do is step into the sun­light. But he has placed him­self where the light does­n’t reach, where no one else wants to go. This is his under­stand­ing of his lone­li­ness. But I did­n’t want to paint a sto­ry about a lone­ly child.

…
Final­ly, the sto­ry comes to an abrupt end. I end­ed with an old pho­to. I hope peo­ple will believe that this is real, but it is also far from our lives.

My end­ing was based on my own feel­ings. I did­n’t want the Lord of the Flies to con­tin­ue swat­ting flies. There are many inter­pre­ta­tions of the end­ing, but my favorite relates to “unful­filled dreams.” My child­hood dream of becom­ing a mas­ter fly swat­ter nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, but I did draw a book about it. I know some will ques­tion this sto­ry, but I want to say that, tak­ing fly swat­ting as an exam­ple, there are many times when hes­i­ta­tion or oth­er forces have inter­rupt­ed this dream, just like Lord of the Flies. I want­ed to show in my sto­ry a child who, unchal­lenged by the out­side world, does strange things in a dirty and messy envi­ron­ment, yet enjoys them and delights in their pur­suits. His skill at swat­ting flies even­tu­al­ly draws atten­tion, lead­ing adults to haile him as the Lord of the Flies, a farce. So this book is ded­i­cat­ed to those unful­filled dreams. At least, I can’t approach each of my dreams with the same seri­ous­ness and calm­ness as Lord of the Flies.

Although this is a sim­ple sto­ry, I hope it will pro­voke reflec­tion. Why did­n’t the child in the sto­ry final­ly swat the fly? My per­son­al under­stand­ing is that the child turned around, like most peo­ple, or per­haps oth­ers turned around for him. Whether he swats flies again or not is irrel­e­vant; I think he did­n’t. But because he focused on one thing and achieved his dream, he will sure­ly achieve his own dreams in the future.