James Choo
朴实无华 · 光彩世界 “Plain and unadorned · a world of brilliance”
James Choo is an international movie art director with more than twenty years in the business, working across drama, action and animation. He has worked with Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-fat and Milla Jovovich.
In the summer of 2013 Xiang Li and Fei Wu visited his Animegg Kingdom Studio in Hong Kong. Xiang laid out work in progress for his team — the first design for the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the panda series on rice paper, and the handful of empresses she had finished by then. There were only a few. Ten years later there were nearly a hundred and fifty.
The only portrait in the section painted almost without color — and the one with the most going on in it.
What is in this painting
Xiang Li builds a portrait out of creatures. Each one is a claim about the person sitting among them.
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1 The title
Eight characters across the top: plain and unadorned — a world of brilliance. The painting argues both halves at once.
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2 The dragon on the left
Head turned back towards him, whiskers drawn as single unbroken lines.
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3 The dragon on the right
Larger, closer, coming forward out of the cloud.
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4 The thread
A single hairline runs from his hand down into the second dragon's mouth.
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5 The plain shirt
A t-shirt, in gray wash, at the center of all that scalework.
