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| Sisu Medium: digital painting |
While I enjoyed the movie, I can see some definite weaknesses, and one of them are the dragons’ designs. The character designs suffer from same-face-syndrome, which is sad considering that Disney has some of the world’s most talented and creative artists and animators working for them. There was concept art for Sisu that looked closer to a cross between traditional dragons and Phaya-Naga (Thai water serpents with horns in the middle of their foreheads), but Disney trashed it in favor of something reminiscent of Frozen’s Elsa. The final design for Sisu is cute and ready to be a plush toy, but not a dragon from any culture in the world. I find it a bit sad that the film aims to be representation for people from East Asia, and yet it butchers a creature so important to their mythology. In this painting, I aimed to tweak elements to allow her to look like a dragon-Naga cross, but also to still look like Sisu.
