Noi Noi’s Pi Mai Lao
Laos is a small landlocked country within South East Asia bordered by Thailand, China, and Vietnam. Not many people know about this humble and unique country so I hope to share a bit of my culture through a children’s book depicting our New Year’s traditions.
Noi Noi is a young child who often visits temples with her grandmother. On this particular visit to the temple, it is the start of the Pi Mai festival, or Lao New Year. Join Noi Noi as she experiences Pi Mai Lao with her grandmother and hears the legend behind the celebration.
Design Process
Empathize
Before divulging into the project's creation phase, I wanted to ensure that I conveyed my culture accurately rather than just with my perspective. Through my own experience of Lao culture, there are still some questions that I have about how our traditions arose and why we do things a certain way. Growing up, and even today, I had a hard time explaining my culture and why we hold pageants every year other than to raise money. To better educate not only myself and others about my culture, but I also did some research and asked family members from Laos about the different aspects of our culture.
Define
After gathering that information, I became more self-aware about how some Laotian American children do not have an understanding of their culture and just accept things as-is. My goal with this book is to create a resource to introduce and educate children about Lao culture by focusing on our most celebrated holiday, Lao New Year or Pi Mai Lao. The target audience for this project is children ages ten and older, without a limitation on cultural background since this is meant to provide insight into Lao culture.
Ideation: Context
It is easier to educate a younger mind than an older one, so the type of book I created is a children’s book. Rather than give information that can easily be disregarded or ignored, I wanted to make it more enjoyable through rhythm and rhyme. It is easier to retain information that one is interested in if it is shared in a pattern structure rather than a large amount of text. Children also tend to have a shorter attention span to just information; therefore, I decided to create a storyline for them to follow in the book with a relatable character, Noi Noi.
Ideation: Visuals
After several revisions and critiques of the text, I moved on to the visual aspect of the book, character design, and color palette. I started by sketching out how I wanted Noi Noi and her grandmother to look and then came up with a contrasting color palette. To emphasize Noi Noi’s youthful appearance, I made her have a plump and round figure with big eyes. In contrast, her grandmother was slim with narrow eyes.
In terms of color palette, I gave Noi Noi more pastels than her grandmother’s darker colors which are also muted. Rather than choose vibrant colors, I decided on muted tones because I wanted them to be more warming to the eyes rather than striking. After developing my two main characters, I went on to do sketches of pages and was assisted by a close friend who also shares my Lao culture, Gina Rattanakone. The following images are page sketches by both Gina and I, Gina made five-page skeletons and helped with background art for three-page spreads.
Sketches
Test
After presenting the book's pages, the feedback that I received was that Noi Noi’s grandmother’s face tended to shift and not be consistent. Some pages were more detailed in the coloring than others in lighting. Overall, the style was consistent, but only in some areas was there room for improvement.
Reflection
After working on this project, I realized how much work goes into a children’s book containing many detailed images. Though I tried to approach it with a simplistic style, it felt lacking in a way that made it too flat rather than an aesthetically pleasing simplistic style. I also learned a bit more about my culture in the process and the different symbols attached to the things we do. For instance, the annual pageant reflects the legend of Pi Mai and how there was a king with seven daughters. It created a deeper connection between me and my culture while helping to showcase my growth as an artist through a sentimental piece that I feel captures a bit of my childhood with my grandmother.