about the author: eggs and metaphors

I was feeling a bit stuck in regards to this project until we did the metaphor task. Murakami uses a lot of (extended) metaphors in his writing so it's hard to not just illustrate this upfront, or in a simple way. Doing some written work in regards to ideas was helpful but I usually find drawing and sketching a more productive method for me so made lots of quick thumbnails. The ideas start to produce themselves in a chain.

I think a point to be thinking about at this point is not just to be presenting what is/ already happening in the plots of these books, but rather the world they inhabit. Though not stated to be all in the same world or a different world to the real one at that, the books all attach to each other in a nice way.

I'm not sure what got me thinking about eggs as a symbol of Murakami's work. There's a lot of cooking in his books, something that brings each character back to the real world and mundane from the sometimes surreal scenarios. I also thought about how the parallel worlds that are so predominant in his work could be presented by double yolked eggs. It might be a long shot.

I continued with some more food and cooking related ideas. In the book After Dark there's a lot of scenes set in the grocery store. They're mostly 'normal' and mundane, but seem to hold significance. Takahashi picks up some milk, and I thought about how I could use the missing child trope for Eri Asai, who has not physically disappeared but appears to be in another realm. It could become a short animation, but seems more suited to a gif.

The mysterious women in Murakami books are often interchangeable I find. I was going for a loose look reminiscent of Ping Zhu but it just became very messy and undistinguished! I think this is particularly because I used acrylic rather than gouache and the wrong type of brush. If I had planned the figures that would have also helped!