Born in 1999, Orange Sea, a pure arts student at Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD U), is the original author of the COSMO SHERO series. The 29 Cosmos cats she created and presented interpret the avant-garde and romance of Gen Z girls with great style. This collaboration spanned the ocean, the 12-hour time difference and the two seasons of summer and autumn, but it could not stop us from fitting in with young creators. In a short meeting, we all burned a little for this work!
So who is she holy?
“Orange Sea”, originally her WeChat name, accompanied her for many, many years. Orange is the warm yellow cast by street lamps, and the sea is full of blue. The two preferred colors, one cold and one warm, collide, so there is an “orange sea”.
There is another explanation for the origin of the word “Orange”, because my favorite anime character when I was a child was “FREE! One of the male protagonists of “Men’s Swimming Club”, Tachibana Makoto, Aiwu and Wu, the word “tachibana” added another weight to her heart. Later, she discovered a band called “Orange Sea”. The names are similar, the songs are the same, “heroes see the same thing,” she said.
As a child, Tachibana’s dream was not to become a painter, but to be a business woman. “Be super delicate! And spend money without blinking an eye!” Therefore, when all her elementary school classmates ordered comic books, she was already “one step ahead” and began to read “Towards Fortune”. At the same time, he started his first business—reselling red scarves bought at the school gate for 50 cents at a high price to students who forgot to wear red scarves before raising the flag.
Tachibana said, “I have been a child with ideas since I was a child. I know what I aspire to, what I am looking forward to, and what I hope to achieve.” She was “stocked” by her parents and cultivated her sense of independence since she was a child. At the age of seven or eight, she took the bus back to her grandma’s house in Hubei by herself. At the age of fourteen or five, she decided to go abroad to study alone. She enjoys the freedom to independently control time and manage the economy, and has gradually clear goals for her future.
This cooperation is a “proposition composition” received by Orange Sea. She needs to dissect it, deconstruct it, reorganize and fill it. The eye of the question is “SHERO”, and the reliance on solving the question is one’s own understanding and experience.
“You say ‘big heroine’, ‘gen Z’, ‘what should women do’, these are some labels, right? My understanding is that every woman can be herself. Because I think whether it is a heroine or a hero Female protagonists, she has a quality, they are not afraid of such labels and stereotypes, and they shine in their own fields.”
She has her own answer and she took action early on.
For every creator, the works they create with their hearts have become their own child-like existences. Ju Hai called this process: “Nüwa pinch people!” On the other hand, she and the kitten in her writing had an inner connection that she had never felt in her previous creative experience. When she was painting, she felt more and more that they were very similar, and even had the illusion that she was “painting herself”.
Shouldn’t it be “going crazy”?
Ju Hai said that one day she went for a swim in the pool and looked at herself in the mirror, and suddenly felt that her body was very similar to the kitten named “Breakout Cat”, “Why are you so kind!” This kind of “I seem to be in The feeling of “painting yourself” is something that Tachibana has never encountered before. Completed 29 works in a short period of time, such a high-intensity creation made Coss cat “easily” occupy her entire life. She joked that her iPad screen has been ground into the surface of the moon, “draw when you open your eyes, and sleep when you’re done.”
In addition to the “wave-breaking cat” who is very similar to himself, after some psychological competition, Orange Sea also gave the TOP3 of other tracks in his heart.
“Freedom”, “Women” and “Perfection” are her three favorite creations. “Liberty Cat” has her favorite Y2K style – throwback to the millennials. People who have experienced that era always carry the interesting memories of the era that cannot be separated, why not fall on the tip of the pen and become eternal. The “perfect cat” has an outstanding idea of ”caring for the disabled”, so she painted the kitten with watery eyes and sparkling skirt, which is full of beautiful expectations.
The “female cat” is the most time-consuming and laborious one. She combines the depiction of heroines in traditional New Year pictures, and on top of this, she incorporates ingenious traditional Chinese patterns, such as the armor on the body, the rice paper on the back, and so on. Also put a lot of time and energy into the creation, as well as “Hua Dan” and “29”.
What will be the most popular TOP3 in the market?
“It should be more cute or sweet, such as “Girl”, “Freedom”, “Baby”. The cheongsam of the baby cat is also very cute, and the idea of ’Mahjong’ proposed by Teacher Xing Fei is also Very ingenious.”
Tachibana hopes that collectors will look for the easter eggs in the works, because she spends a lot of thought to leave marks. It’s like the two ends of a silk thread, when they touch each other, they will have the same frequency.
“The ‘Beautiful Cat’ has a stamp with its own design on it, and each corner of the stamp has a small ’24-7′ (Baidu’s explanation for it is: seven days a week, every day I miss you 24 hours a day). The baby cat’s tail is a mini cat that is fishing like Jiang Taigong, and a small dried fish is caught; the ‘Scientific Cat’ badge is also a small dried fish… If anyone accidentally sees it, If it makes them feel warm and fun, it’s a win-win!” After all, cats are not vegetarians, cats eat fish!
We said to her with an open mind: “You are like an alien, secretly leaving some traces, waiting for the same kind to match the code.”
How would you rate yourself?
“99!” She replied playfully, “Let’s not give full marks yet.”
Those distances from the perfect score are also far away, but that is the space reserved for their own growth. She thought about it, “Would it be better if the creative cycle could be a little longer?” But then she was very sure of herself, “Actually, this creation was beyond my expectations.”
Faced with 29 colorful themes, how to capture so many creative inspirations in a short period of time? Tachibana’s answer was: “I have a very strange system of my own.” Almost at the first sight of the subject, her brain began to have an inspirational meeting.
“When I opened the ppt and saw these 29 themed words for the first time, I thought ‘how do I paint this’, ‘what do I paint’. Every time I think of a small element, it makes me very excited , I can’t wait to get up and paint!”
“I will first draw the approximate position on the sketch, and I will not draw it very carefully, mainly to confirm that each element and position can ‘coexist harmoniously'”, several large circles and horizontal and vertical lines on the orange sea sketch formed the original idea.
The matter of “stuck” is almost insulated from her. Except that sometimes her well-designed ingenuity is ruthlessly killed by “Party A” (it’s us!), “because I feel that I have worked hard, but I have been passed… But I also understand your aesthetic system.” Any two things in parallel require a running-in period. After that, she became more and more able to control the style and rhythm of creation, and became more and more familiar in the later stages. “The brain turns fast and the hand draws fast.”
Another of her works, the “Little People” series, is also being continuously updated by Xiaohongshu. In her eyes, these villains have no gender, nor are they “children” under the conventional understanding, they are more like empty bottles. They are “nothing” in the sense of self, but they are the best carriers of inspiration that she pops up anytime, anywhere.
“Sometimes the inspiration is I listened to a song today, played a game, or I saw the flowers in the garden. They almost all come from my life. For example, I went to the aquarium the other day to play, I had a blister on my foot with my new shoes, and when I went to buy a Band-Aid I found a very cute pattern. It’s all my stuff.”
She put these random and life-filled memory fragments into the container “little people”, like recording vlogs and writing diaries. Looking back after a while, what I regained is not only the exquisite ‘little people’, but also the thoughts and thoughts of the place at that time.
In the vast world, “interesting” was the adjective that moved her the most. Interesting work, interesting life, interesting soul. In a life as plain as white water, these “fun” have become effervescent tablets thrown into a cup, and surging bubbles appear. “I’m trying to grow into an interesting person,” said Tachibana.
Having said that, these ‘little people’ were actually found by Tachibana from her original collection, and it was the beginning of her challenge to serialize creation. Through the creation of Coss cat, she found that serial creation is still her favorite, so becoming a digital artist was also included in her future planning. But recently, she has been thinking about letting these “small containers” rest for a while, “I feel a little tired of painting.”
The “love-hate relationship” between Party A and Party B could have a few more episodes than “Guiding Light”. Putting it on Ju Hai, it is even better: because in a sense, she has two “Parties”.
“Don’t change it again, please.” Tachibana jokingly told us. After all, there are not many files on the computer of Party B named “First Edition”, “Revised Edition”, “Final Edition”, “Final Edition”, “This Time Really the Final Edition”…
Her other “Party A” is her mother. Ju Hai’s mother is a university art professor, and she can often give advice on her daughter’s creations. Between mother and daughter, you go back and forth to revise, make comments, revise, and make suggestions, until she gets tired of making changes. But after it was released, “I found that everyone quite liked it.”
What is it like to have a Party A mother? Tachibana said, “—that is, if there is divine help.”
“Once when I was a child, my mother criticized me in public in front of all the children, saying that my sketches were particularly poor. Later, when I grew up, sometimes she would say that my skeletal muscles were wrong, and why did I dare not use color?”, these The words still hit me hard.”
“I’ve been brainstorming since I was a child. After I became famous, someone interviewed me, and I must ‘accuse’ my mother.” She even has a diary with the title page: “Mom is Terrible.”
As she grew older, she gradually understood her mother’s strictness and gentleness, and the two became friends. When she began to challenge the creation of the series, the communication with her mother about the details of creation became more and more. She was happy to take the advice of the best teacher, soaking up the knowledge like a sponge. If she happens to want to go together every now and then, that’s even better, she will secretly cheer herself up, “wow! I have grown up!”
Orange sea patriotic elements, very interested in history, culture and art history, all come from the influence of mother. They would watch historical documentaries together and go to museums together. In her impression, “she can recite any ancient poems like the back of her hand, and she knows all about the ancients, moderns, and foreign countries.” , to touch the background of the artifact. In the days of studying abroad, Ju Hai deeply felt the natural connection between herself and the cultural background. When she properly displayed the elements of the national style in her works to show her classmates, she always felt a sense of national pride in her heart. pregnancy.
“Warm.” Tachibana always mentions this word when talking about his own works. People who have no intersection meet because of their works in another sense, some are appreciated and affirmed; some are warmed and healed. At the same frequency, Tachibana is delighted and grateful.
“I think the biggest driving force of creation is everyone’s love, like firewood filling my creative boiler. It’s really important to be seen.”
COSMO: There are many “chain” elements in your creations. What is the origin of this?
Tachibana: Actually, I don’t think it’s a chain. Rather, it’s a string of beads, beads, or a string of beads. Why so many? This is a good question. I didn’t particularly deliberately draw so-and-so, how many chains must be added to this painting, but I think that adding some small chains and beads will make me feel very cute and harmonious. OK, then I’ll add it. Anyway, there is no special substantive significance, and it has not risen to the aesthetic point of view, but if I add it a lot of times, I will be very satisfied when I see it.
COSMO: What do you most want to praise yourself for in the creative process?
Orange Sea: Hardworking little bee!
COSMO: What kind of career do you aspire to in the future?
Tachibana: I want to be able to do what I love. For example, after our cooperation this time, I very much hope that I can become a digital art painter in the future. Because I found that I like series creation very much, including the oil paintings and sculptures that I did a long time ago, I like to do series very much. Because ‘series’ makes me feel more continuous and allows me to present the inspiration in my head one by one. If you can be fortunate enough to continue to create in this area and insist on doing what you like, it must be the best.
COSMO: What is your favorite thing to say during your cooperation with us?
Tachibana: I think we should write something real, right? Don’t let me change it, I will be charged for changing it again, and it will be charged for more than three times! (I said this is not good)
Interview: Chu Qiao
Written by: Yang Zi, Chu Qiao
Video Clip: Yang Shu
Image source: provided by respondents
Wonderful past