Unit 01_ Motivation

Because I was inspired by the White Tiger, one of the four guardian deities of East Asian, I also began researching the image of the White Tiger imagined by ancient people.

It required to me not only the appearance of the character I made but also the personality, environment around the character, and the purpose of his/her life. For these details, I should search more references from novel, movie, and animation which I have appreciated.

In case of the novel, I want to explain about <저 이승의 선지자 (The Prophet of Mundanity)>, 2017, written by Korean novelist, 김보영, Bo-Yeong Kim, Seoul: Azak.

It demonstrates about the world beyond's gods and their different attitudes toward life and death based on Buddhist perspective. To be specific, "depravity" in this Buddhist science fiction novel is determined by whether one values life in this world or life in the afterlife more. And the life on the world is just "learning" for them even though it is good or bad for their aspect. The main context of this story is that the protagonist finds its own identity through conflict with other gods around it due to this "depravity".

Although the setting of the underworld in this novel has oriental foundation, it combines polytheistic settings that are common in Western mythology.

On the other hand, <Soul>, 2020 has significantly different aspect about the life and death compared to the novel I explained before.

Surprisingly, these two of my favorite works have so different perspective and settings about the life on the world.

Life in this world in the novel mentioned above is just learning and simulation itself, but this animation is very different in that it reminds us of the joy of the life and the preciousness of life.

To sum up, these two works inspired to me for the new perspective of life and death. Thus, I made a decision to create the underworld.