Just as every American teenager has read Fahrenheit 451, The Tale of Kieu was the childhood of every Vietnamese teenager including me. Every secondary school has taught and praised this tale of a talented young beautiful girl that had to sell herself as a prostitute to save her family from the corrupted government system. The story is a 3254 verses long poem in traditional Vietnamese (Nom letters). That is why it is quite abstract and poetic for even local Vietnamese to fully understand the details. Yet I have decided to visualize a part of my
childhood into art and design.
The fascinating part was brainstorming and coming up with the costumes, features, and style for each character with such significant roles and persona. Through research and referencing between many different Asian cultures and time periods (the basis of the historical information of the poem), the personality of each character is reflected through their facial features, color, pose and clothing.
