This is my depiction of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from the seminal Chinese novel, Journey to the West, based on the character's literary description as translated by Anthony C. Yu. Many traditional and modern portrayals of Wukong show him at the peak of his power and I wanted to explore how the novel's description contrasts with these portrayals. Because the novel is based on a true historical event, I also wanted the image to be as historically accurate as possible while balancing both a realistic and cinematic aesthetic. Inferred from passages in the novel, his appearance is meant to resemble a rhesus macaque, a primate species common to most of Asia, while his outfit is largely based on clothing and armour from the second century B.C.

Context: Who is Sun Wukong? ================================================== For the uninitiated, Sun Wukong is a religious and literary figure featured prominently in the Chinese novel, Journey to the West. The novel is a fantastical retelling of a historical event that took place in the seventh century, when a monk traveled from China to India to fetch and return Buddhist scriptures. In the novel, Sun Wukong is a monkey who leads a tribe of other monkeys on a mountain. He becomes a powerful immortal, flexing his supernatural abilities to strong-arm other divinities into giving him gifts or doing him favours. He proudly proclaims himself the Handsome Monkey King (despite other characters' comments on his ugliness) and the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven. This provokes Heaven itself to attempt to rein him in, but he defeats many of Heaven's heroes and nearly single-handedly routs its armies. He is eventually subdued by the Buddha himself and, to redeem himself, is tasked with protecting the historical monk on his journey to India. Sun Wukong's signature weapon is an ancient iron staff that can change its size and shape as he wills it. Depictions of the character as the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven is popular among artists in any media. Inspiration ================================================== This project began when I started wondering: "What would Sun Wukong look like if he was a real historical figure and how different would he look from the way artists historically depict him?" My curiosity grew when I started reading Journey to the West and found his literary description contrasting with every depiction I'd ever seen of him in: - traditional art (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/8022105579999814/); - film (https://screenanarchy.com/assets_c/2013/12/The-Monkey-King-poster-Donnie-Yen-thumb-430xauto-44827.jpg); - theater (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-beijing-opera-performer-performing-the-journey-to-the-west-beijing-29836411.html); - animation (https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjJjZDdkZjEtYTZkNy00ZDg5LTg5NjQtY2Q3YTA3NmMzNzRjXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg); and - video games (https://www.pcgamesn.com/wp-content/sites/pcgamesn/2024/08/black-myth-wukong-release-times-580x334.jpg). As a literary purist, this further motivated me to pursue this project as it would present the character in a way few people have ever seen. Since his story is part of an interpretation of a real historical event, I wanted the character's design and setting to be as realistic and grounded as possible. I also wanted the image to tell a bit of his story and give a strong sense of his character, so I chose to depict a scene that conceivably happens in Chapter 5 of the novel, when Heaven lays siege to Wukong's mountain kingdom and he finally emerges to challenge the heavenly forces to battle. For dramatic purposes, I wanted the palette to evoke the mystical tone of artwork by Alan Lee (particularly from The Mabinogion), John Howe, and Julek Heller. I also took inspiration from the look of films like Excalibur, 300, and Immortals. Process ================================================== I used passages from Anthony C. Yu's translation of the novel as a basis for Wukong's appearance and to infer the historical time period when his rebellion took place. I then researched on historical clothing and armour, learning much about how social classes and foreign relations affected ancient Chinese clothing, and attempting to bring all that meaning to the finished artwork. His appearance, according to the novel, is as follows: - He wears "a red robe with a yellow sash” (Yu, Ch. 2, p. 127), which he stole from a fisherman. These appear more aged, soiled, and tattered in the image. - He is “not the most attractive" and resembles "a pignolia-eating monkey” (Yu, Ch. 2, p. 115) and is also "not four feet tall" (Yu, Ch, 2, p.128). It's a vague description, but led me to base him off of the rhesus macaque, a common Old World monkey species found in both China and India. - “Hanging past his shoulders were two ears, forked and hard” (Yu, Ch. 4, p. 152). - His battle dress is a pair of cloud-walking shoes "the colour of lotus root", a yellow golden chainmail cuirass, and a “cap with erect phoenix plumes, made of red gold” (Yu, Ch. 3, p. 137), all given to him from other divinities in an effort to quickly appease him so he would leave them alone. I wanted to emphasize how cobbled-together his outfit is to reinforce the character's ignorance, chaotic nature, vanity, and delusions of grandeur. For his shoes, I doubled down on the cloud motif and chose to model them after a pair of yuntouxie, literally translated as "cloud head shoes". These shoes were worn by all social classes in ancient China, but I added embroidered golden patterns to reflect their original divine owner. Along similar lines, I chose to depict his armour as a golden chainmail shirt that would have originated from a foreign nation. Chainmail never caught on in ancient China and was regarded more as a symbol of wealth and status rather than practical battle attire, making Wukong look more exotic and further reinforcing his ignorance and ego. Even so, I wanted the edges of the chainmail to be uneven and ragged to suggest that the armour was crudely tailored to fit him. His headgear is based on a reconstructed cap (https://imgur.com/XNDIEfz) worn by ancient elite Chinese soldiers. This design is speculated to have evolved into the cap that the character normally wears when portrayed in Peking opera. I changed some parts of the cap that are typically made of silk into gold to give it a more divine quality. I used sparrow and peacock feathers as the "erect phoenix plumes" - which would have come from a Chinese phoenix's wings and tail, respectively. - Over his armour, he wears a red and yellow robe (Yu, Ch. 4, p. 158), which was given to him as tribute, hence its more immaculate and luxurious quality. It's also modeled after court official attire. - His staff is “an iron rod... He found a golden hoop at each end, with solid black iron in between. Immediately adjacent to one of the hoops was the inscription, ‘The Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod. Weight: thirteen thousand five hundred pounds’” (Yu, Ch. 3, p.135). Although the inscription is partly obscured, the last two characters, translated as either "hundred catty" (50 kilograms or 110 pounds) or "hundreds of catty", indicates the staff's heavy weight. The script used for the inscription is seal script, one of the oldest forms of written Chinese that is still recognizable today. When in use, the staff “was as thick as a rice bowl” (Yu, Ch. 5, 171), which is very large for a character who is so short. I kept the design of the staff simple as it would have been from the Stone Age. To achieve my goal of visual storytelling, I imagined the scene as if it was a still from a live action film while making it translatable for other uses like posters or book covers. Just as the character's outfit shows his ignorance and ego, I wanted the character's pose and facial expression to evoke his personality - combative, smug, and physically strong. He has the heavy staff effortlessly slung across his shoulders while he points a finger in challenge towards the heavens. I also wanted the camera to point steeply down towards the character to emphasize his short stature, but still give him an an imposing and commanding presence. Challenges arose due to the AI's unfamiliarity with the granular details of ancient Chinese clothing, the lack of high quality reference images to train it, and its bias towards traditional depictions of Wukong. This frequently caused incorrect renderings of the character's anatomy and outfit. It particularly struggled with the headgear and shoes. Because the AI couldn't output a single image that captured all the granular details that I wanted, the final image is a composite of many images that the AI produced, which I combined and made colour adjustments to in Photoshop. I learned through this project that, as someone with an artistic background, I am pro-AI. While I don't think it's capable yet as a replacement for human artists, I do think AI encourages artists to be more creative, more capable, more knowledgeable, and is conducive to making more efficient workflows.