Saju: written in the stars

Saju: Written in the stars

Have you ever been fearful of your own destiny? The thought of our entire existences being already written can be a bit scary. Some say there's a way of reading your future through the stars, other prefer to look at pieces of paper and some people just need the palm of your hand to answer the many questions we all desperetely want answers for.

What they all share in common is that fate cannot be changed and that's exactly what this project is all about.

Saju (the korean fortune telling and art of reading the stars) tells the story of Byeol, a student in her last year of high school who after visiting a not so common looking fortune telling booth encounters a pair of also unique characters with the only task to make sure to fulfill what destiny has prepared for her.

Saju: written in the stars is inspired by all those South korean dramas I love watching and that have heavyly influenced my storytelling! This is also my final project for my concept degree and so I thought I would finally create a story myself, to not only create images but also a whole universe behind them.

Please, enjoy!

Before starting to work on the visual part of my project, I first collected a wide range of references for all aspects of the images I would later create. I even had the pleasure to visit Seoul while working on this project so you can imagine how exciting that was!

As always, I started by exploring different facial features, hairstyles and clothing for the characters.

In this case Byeol is who I started with. Since she's the main character, I thought it would make sense to build the rest of the characters in contrast to what she looked like.

Byeol, meaning 'star' in Korean, is supposed to be this happy, carefree but also responsible student who is excited for her soon to come university life. That's why her color palette has both warm and cold tones. Representing that contrast in her personality felt important so I also gave her a colourful bag with tons of accessories on it to wear over that boring school unifrom!

Next in line were Han and Dasom.

They both depict their respective tarot cards (love and death) in the human world. They're a mixture of modern Korean fashion and also Korean folklore, that's why there's two designs for each character. One being in their human form and the other their actual appearance as it appears in their cards.

Dasom, an indigenous Korean name meaning love, is supposed to help Byeol meet her first love (and probably her only one since she seems to not have that much time left). She will do her best;  setting blind dates for her, sneaking into her school to know about every single gossip and even getting Byeol to meet her favourite celebrity. None of them will work and fate will seem to have something far more complicated in store for Byeol.

In the other hand,  Han is frequently translated as sorrow, spite, rancor, regret, resentment or grief, among many other attempts to explain a concept that has no English equivalent. It's meant to represent both sadness and hope.

Han's only job is to take the souls of human's whose days on earth have come to an end as written by fate. 

In korean folklore Grim reapers are called Jeoseung Saja, creatures that just as their name announces, are mere messengers from the afterlife. It's not their resposabilty to judge one's soul but only to help and guide them. 

Han takes his job very seriously and after centuries helping all kinds of people, everyone considers Han someone without a heart or soul himself. After all, he stays calm and quiet while witnessing the most heartbreaking and unfair stories of those he acompanies.

That is before he is set up to work with Dasom and meet Byeol who will show him he too also has a destiny written.

Spoiler?? Yes, they fall in love.

Sookja is a short funny looking lady with aunique sense of fashion that perfectly describes how her personality is. She's the owner of her own fortune telling booth, one that seems to be always empty even though it has suspiciously low prices... 

Saju is a project I enjoyed every second spent on, I grew to love the characters and their surrounding universe. Although this is a short overview of their story and my workflow I still hope I was able to convey how much passion was put into it.

And most importanlt, thank you for reading and hope you too enjoyed learning about Byeol, Han and Dasom!