NO LONGER HUMAN
Book Cover
The design is base on a Japanese novel, No Longer Human, which tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself “disqualified from being human”. The main character never felt fit in with others. He had been struggle with understing the emtions from others so he always felt isolated from people. He attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to drown himself in the sea as an adult. “Sea” is the theme for this design. The main character was drown in the sea. The sea is deep and complex it repersents the human emotions. He was
Process
Selecting the various color of blue to present the water flowing in the sea and the long body of water curling into an arched form also know as the wave. Cutting the paper into different shape of water as some are long and steady and others are short and fluctuating. Then I used a pencil to gently draw the curves onto the paper. After drawing them I use a pen with no ink inside to trace the curves I drew and then erase the pencil strokes. Next, I used the back side of x-acto knife to carve the strokes deeper to make the paper easier to fold. Folding along the lines the paper turns into water waves. Overlapping the pieces of wave to create the is illusion of the sea. Since they are waves, they also have the foam of surf. To form the foam of surf, I pick a piece of white paper and draw diverse figures as some big and some small. Then I cut them out of the paper and used the back side of x-acto knife to carve a stroke in the middle in order to let them be stereoscopic. To finish up the piece, I add foam of surf to the sea.
