Bridging Beijing Opera and Hip Hop A Style Fusion Experiment in Character Design

Abstract

The concept of style fusion for visual storytelling is introduced and applied in this research. Style fusion is the process of identifying two distinct styles as sources, which are from different artists or culture backgrounds, and applying features and visual symbols from both to develop a new style. As a proof of concept, the source performance styles selected for fusion are traditional Chinese Beijing opera and hip hop. A set of guidelines for this style fusion are developed after an analysis of the visual symbols of each source style. A character and an environment design fusion are done based on these guidelines. Finally, the style fusion is visualized using 3D models.