Made of Mud

 Well, I have been working on a short story, named Made of Mud. I have finished skething the story-board, created the characters and now started working on the actual scenes. I hope I can find the time to finish this animation movie until the end of this year.

Peacock Sculpture

I made this peacock for a purchase order. It is a modification of the original one that the customer had in hand.

My First Personal Exhibition

Here comes the big day! My first personal exhibition which took place in Bilkent University Library Exhibition Hall, between 12-20 April 2010. 

You can find some pictures below:

Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki, who is the best animation director ever, was a must to get involved in this exhibiton as one of my sculptures. I love his animation movies. They are all inspiring great art-works: Sprited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbour Totoro, Porco Rosso, Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo..


 So I drew a few sketches of him and tried to use some sub-characters from his animation films.

Kappa

Kappa (河童), legendary creatures, a type of water sprite found in Japanese folklore. As water monsters, kappa have been frequently blamed for drownings, and are often said to try to lure people to the water and pull them in with their great skill at wrestling. They are sometimes said to take their victims for the purpose of eating their livers. Kappa are not entirely antagonistic to humankind, however. They are curious of human civilization, and they can understand and speak Japanese. 

  Kappas are typically depicted as roughly humanoid in form, and about the size of a child. Their scaly, reptilian skin ranges in color from green to yellow or blue. Kappas supposedly inhabit the ponds and rivers of Japan and have various features to aid them in this environment, such as webbed hands and feet.They are sometimes said to smell like fish, and they can certainly swim like them. 

It was believed that if confronted with a kappa there was but one mean of escape: kappas, for one reason or another, obsess over being polite, so if you were to gesture a deep bow to a kappa it would more than likely return it. In doing so, the water kept in the lily-pad-like bowl on their head would spill out and the kappa would be rendered unable to leave the bowed position until the bowl was refilled with water from the river in which it lived. If a human were to refill it, it was believed the kappa would serve them for all eternity

Sadako Sasaki

Sadako Sasaki (佐々木 禎子 ), January 7, 1943 – October 25, 1955, was a Japanese girl who was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, near her home in Hiroshima, Japan.

Sadako was at home when the explosion occurred, about one mile from Ground Zero. In November 1954, Sadako developed swellings on her neck and behind her ears. In January 1955, purple spots had formed on her legs. Subsequently, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She was hospitalized in 1955, and given, at the most, a year to live.

 There is an ancient Japanese story that promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the Gods. Sadako knew it and started to fold origami cranes to become healthy again. But she fell short of her goal of folding 1,000 cranes, having folded only 644 before her death, and that her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her. 

Oda Nobunaga

I drew a rough sketch of Oda Nobunaga at first.

Oda Nobunaga (織田 信長 ), June 23, 1534 – June 21, 1582) was the initiator of the unification of Japan under the shogunate in the late 16th century, which ruled Japan until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

He was also a major daimyo during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. His opus was continued, completed and finalized by his successors Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

He was the second son of Oda Nobuhide, a deputy shugo (military governor) with land holdings in Owari Province.

Oda Nobunaga appears frequently within fiction and continues to be portrayed in many other anime, manga, video games, and cinematic films. Many depictions show him as villainous or even demonic in nature, though some portray him in a more positive light.

 Nobunaga lived a life of continuous military conquest, eventually conquering a third of Japanese daimyo before his death in 1582. His successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a loyal Oda supporter, would eventually become the first man to conquer all of Japan and the first ruler of all Japan since the Ōnin War.

 The cause of Mitsuhide's betrayal has been actively debated for centuries. It has been proposed that Mitsuhide may have heard a rumor that Nobunaga would transfer Mitsuhide's fief to the page, Mori Ranmaru, with whom Nobunaga is alleged to have been in a ritualized homosexual relationship, a form of patronage, known as shudō.Other motives include revenge for Nobunaga's numerous insults and derisive treatment of Mitsuhide, or Mitsuhide's jealousy as Nobunaga had shown greater favor toward another vassal, Hashiba Hideyoshi.

 Just eleven days after the coup at Honnō-ji, Mitsuhide was killed at the Battle of Yamazaki and his army was defeated by Hashiba Hideyoshi, who eventually became heir to Nobunaga's legacy. He is more widely known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi. At the time of Nobunaga's death, he controlled more than half of the provinces in Japan. The majority of these Provinces were in the Kyoto region.

 Militarily, Nobunaga's revolutionary vision not only changed the way war was fought in Japan, but also in turn made one of the most modernized forces in the world at that time. He developed, implemented, and expanded the use of long pikes, firearms and castle fortifications in accordance with the expanded mass battles of the period.

As Nobunaga conquered Japan and amassed a great amount of wealth, he progressively supported the arts for which he always had an interest, but which he later and gradually more importantly used as a display of his power and prestige. He built extensive gardens and castles which were themselves great works of art.