Artist's commentary
Chinese Lunar Exploration Program Team 2
In late 2013, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program successfully landed Chang’e 3 on the moon. To celebrate the feat, I drew anthropomorphized version of the 3 spacecrafts in this mission. I adjusted the colors and gave it a better typography in 2024.
- Yutu is the moon rover. He is a rabbit.
- Chang’e 3 is the moon lander. She is a girl with rabbit ears.
- Long March 3B/E is the rocket. He is a pegasus.
The moon crew (Chang’e and Yutu) are rabbit based because jade rabbits are living on the moon according to traditional Chinese folklore.
Chang’e is pronounced like Chang Er, both are rising tone.
I was in the middle of a low period as an artist (2012 – 2022). It took me great effort to finish this picture, but I wasn’t satisfied with the result. Yutu looked too similar to Cloud, while Chang’e looked too similar to Alice (Cloud and Alice are my original characters from the Electric Hearts project). Their designs are too generic, unable to reflect the substance of their missions. Their eyes are way too big…I can go on forever. It was rather embarrassing for me to look at them, even in 2024 when I was writing this post.
Although I obviously don’t think the picture looks very good, I still keep it in my gallery for other reasons.
Firstly, this picture marked a turning point of my creative direction. It helped me to realize that I was empty inside, I didn’t have a meaningful story to tell with my art. My vague world building, as well as the generic, purposeless cute characters are unsustainable.
With that in mind, I began to expand my vision to various aspects of the world. I read many books, most of them college textbooks, to accumulate knowledge. I travelled on my bike to places to do field study. I set out to build a reality based world setting for my characters. I also make sure my characters to have clearly defined purposes. Chang’e and Yutu looked too generic in this picture. It was a wake-up call — if they were supposed to be space robots, make sure they look like one. The space robot idea was later fully realized in Alice’s design.
Secondly, this picture is a testament of how difficult it was for an artist to go 100% free and open source software in earlier years.
Let’s dial back the time to 2011. I was radicalized at the time by a hippy-like “revolutionary” impulse to join the free software movement. I ditched Windows and Photoshop overnight, and began using Linux and Krita to handle almost everything.
I draw a lot of concept arts, the ability to put text in my picture is essential. However, Krita’s text tool was completely broken at the time. I could edit text in GIMP, but it only accepted ORA files to exchange with Krita. The ORA format didn’t support Krita’s text objects anyway, and it was also painfully slow, so it was basically useless.
To put text in my picture in 2011, I must first export the KRA file as a PNG, put in the text on a separate layer in GIMP, export the text layer as a PNG, and finally insert that text PNG back to the KRA file as an uneditable, raster layer. It was just too cumbersome to edit text with backs-and-forth like that. In most cases, I would just give up the idea.
Not only that, there were very few free and open fonts to choose from, especially Chinese fonts. Imagine designing a typography layout for your cartoon project using only the Arial font, without the ability to even set the font style as bold. Again, in most cases, I would just give up the idea.
The color management in Linux and Krita also had fundamental issues at the time. I would rather call it “Color Mismanagement”. Until the issues were fixed years later, almost every picture I drew had their colors distorted. They looked washed out on other people’s screens, and they looked too dark when printed on papers.
Linux support for drawing tablets and new GPUs was also abysmal. I could not use recent hardware because the system didn’t support them. I had to use outdated hardware produced 3 – 5 years ago. There were no GUIs for basic tablet functions like customizing the buttons, adjusting the mapping, rotating the orientation. Sometimes a GUI did exist, but it was most likely to be broken.
Switching to free and open source software might have satisfied my ego, but it was not a practical decision at the time. It induced a significant amount of misery during my 2012 – 2022 low period as an artist. Not being able to insert texts in my picture was truly crippling for a concept artist like me. And not being able to rely on and trust my tools was a horrible experience. That said, the jumping of ship was likely inevitable. Due to a lack of art skill and a lack of life experience, my creative endeavor was reaching a dead end. It was a desperate attempt to find another way out.
I could only draw pictures after work as my hobby. As if my day job wasn’t stressful enough, the self-imposed free software obstacles sucked even more energy away from my creative process. In most days, I would just stop creating and become a consumer of content on Youtube and Twitter, which in turn, brought even more stress into my mind.
My sharing of the free software experience on twitter also alienated my audience. All they saw was me becoming less capable of drawing the stuff they liked, and I was becoming a weirdo of some hippy movement they had never heard of, babbling all day about some irrelevant technology. Once I realized this, I stopped talking online almost completely, which made me more isolated and lonely.
Although it was a difficult time, I persevered. Instead of being a consumer waiting for things to change, I actively participated in various free and open source software projects and did whatever I could to help to make the things I use better.
Through years of combined effort of the free and open source community as a whole, the user experience on the platform has since improved significantly. When I was renewing the picture above in 2024, everything was done in less than 10 minutes. Krita now has a usable text tool and everything needed to make a nice layout. There are many free and open fonts to choose from. I can use the latest hardware and everything worked. Color management also worked as intended for me to correct the washout colors. In general, I think the user experience of Linux today is better than that of Windows these days.
Looking back, the self-inflicted difficult situation forced me to study and reflect over a lot of things. It was like a long spiritual journey. I obtained a changed mindset because of it. This new mindset is responsible for the positive changes in my life since 2022. It also helped me find my voice, meaningful stories to tell with my improved art skill.
Maybe I decided to keep this picture to remind me of this journey.