L18 Flashcards
衣
2 >> 衤
3>> without top hat
4>> Factory style top and left side.
5>> Top and bottom sandwich another character
CLOTHING // underneath a top hat, all you’ve got is a skirt. This is the latest fashion crazy, billowing skirts with hooks and dops adorning them
2>> cloak, an elongated fashion skirt worn on the back
3>> Scarf. If you haven’t got a hat on your head, you need something to keep warm. May as well wear it as a turban.
4>> Bandana
5>> Top hat & Scarf
裁
TAILOR // all year, the tailor sits around twiddling his hard-skinned thumbs. Then, every year, at thanksgiving, pilgrims pour in asking for suits and shirts and clothing of all kinds. So at thanksgiving, the tailor never closes shop.
装
ATTIRE // those most robust of turtle soldies require clothing that will adequately equip them for battle. “Attire”, hear them demand it at morning parade. “Atttttttiiiirrreee”.
哀
GREIF // a much-loved family uncle, egbert, has contracted alzheimers. Here, he sits at the christmas dinner table, eating and forgetting he’d eaten already. He’s forgotten that he’s wearing a top hat and scarf, and looks a fool. Although he’s still alive, the family greive for the loss of their egbert.
袁
YUAN // as in the president and general of China, Yuan Shikai, this is a popular surname. We have to imagine an outspoken politician, but one who wanted to retain his powers of enigmacy. Even time Yuan Shikai spoke, he did so with a scarf wrapped around his face. And, bizzarely, he slept in a giant lidded crock so that nobody could reach him until he pulled back the lid.
初
ELEMENTARY // this is probably the simplest of all character cases to crack. What ever could Cloak + Dagger mean. “It’s elementary, my dear watson”.
补
PATCH // patching a cloak requires you to find the patch, prepare the area, pre-stitch, patch, then stich. And it still might fall off. But hang on a minute, thought the wizard… why on earth am I doing this when I could patch the cloak instantly with my wand?
礿
INNER GARMENTS // for skiiers, there’s nothing more important than thermal undergarments. throughout the day, as the skiiers sweat, the undergarments stick like glue to the insides of their clothes.
农
AGRICULTURE // crown and scarf. At the harvest festival fair, Tilly the milk maid won the prize for best lass. They adorned her with a crown and placed her on a pedastal. Now they’ve gone, forgetting her, and she can’t get down. All she’s got is a scarf to endure the cold night on the farm.
浓
CONCENTRATED // It’s the year 2043. To reduce the cost of agriculture even further, all the water is now squeezed out of vegetables in the field. Consumers take the concentrated pack of carrots and add a bit of water.
巾
TOWEL // A stick thin fashion model has gone on a new diet- the shower and towel diet. All day every day she showers under hot and cold streams, then flings a towel over herself. See the product of her labours here, a stick girl with a towel on her shoulders.
帅
COMMANDER // far from the actual battle field, while everyone else is experiencing the horrors of war, the commander strides over to the sabre on his wall, and cleans it down with a down-ey towel.
师
TEACHER // Unlike the commander’s sabre, which is ornamental, the teacher’s serves a practical purpose. Concealed by a towel, it hangs on the ceiling above the students, and they can release it at any moment should the students step out of line.
狮
LION // In his day, the lion used to be the fear of the land. Now, more of a gramps, he’s spending his time teaching a pack of dogs how to be scary. They hang off his every word, gathered in a circle around him and bringing him the best cuts of meat. It ain’t bad being a lion.
布
CLOTH // The hotel was so enormous that the maids all carried giant rolls of fluffy cloth by their sides. When ever necessary, they would cut out a new towel.
帜
STREAMER // this steamer is really rather bizzare. It’s for the swimming party of an animal fanatic. The whole streamer is made of a towel, and it’s got on it a mouth at one end and a pair of legs at the other. They’ve got loads, and are throwing the towelly animally streamers everywhere.
帽
HAT // “You know”, said the gentleman “normally when I use a microwave to heat my pastie, I minimise the risk of radiation attack by wearing a special ‘microwave protection hat’. But today, I’ve only got my scarf, so that’s why I’m wearing it around my head.”
幕
CURTAIN // This graveyard has substituted gates at its entrance for a giant curtain made of towels. But these towels are a particular type of haunting towel, they are the towels of the deceased’s hotel stolen plunder.When you’re next stealing a hotel towel, just think, one day it’ll be curtains for you too.
帛
WHITE TOWEL // literally just read this off, white towel
棉
COTTON // so cotton usually grows on bushes, right? Well this here’s a cotton tree. So scale everything up, and rather than cotton in little balls, you’ve got it in enormous, billowing white towels. They’re so big and heavy, the cotton just falls right off.
市
MARKET // market traders usually let nothing get past them. They’re always the boss, always in charge. But when a lady turned up in nothing but a top hat and a towel, all their bartering banter went out the window. She was a canny buyer, if a little cold by the end of the market day.
肺
LUNGS // CDs, knick nacks, mothy clothes, lungs. Lungs?! Is that really what’s on sale. Yes, that’s right, it’s a set of lungs taking pride of place on the ‘flesh’ market stall.
>> 冖 on top of 巾
>> APRON // a towel, adorned at the edges with tiny little crowns, is the absolute price and joy of the house cook. Doesn’t she look professional with that on?
带
SASH // this one’s part pictograph, part ‘apron’. So the pictograph looks like the sash you tie round an apron. Except, to beef it up, imagine that top line being a WWE/F style belt, awarded for awesome washing up.
滞
STAGNANT // When water stops moving it becomes stagnant. When people are sashed (tied to something, like a mother) they too become stagnant. Imagine an exciteable salmon, sashed to its mother in the stagnant water.
冂
BELT // clearly linked to towel, this is actually a belt from above. it’s trying to stretch all the way around the champion sumo wrestler, but it just isn’t happening!
[nb. To distinguish from towel itself, this one is always hung off an existing vertical stroke, never standalone.]
朿
THORN // thorns usually wrap themselves round trees, but the trees are usually fine. This thorn species, however, has turned itself into a belt by inventing itself an incremental buckle. The belt of thorns are slowly choking the life out of the tree.
制
SYSTEM // The seasoned butcher has established an ingenious method for taking his cows to the slaughter blade. Instead of taking the blade to the cow, he ties a belt around its middle, hoists the cow up, then lowers it onto his blade.
雨
RAIN // One of the clearest examples of a complex pictograph, this one is sky, a couple of clouds, and the rain droplets. It’s like something a primary school child might draw.
>> same
>> Rain // Weather - sometimes condensed at the top, the droplets turning into small horizontal lines
雷
THUNDER // The most exhillerating of weather phenomenons is best enjoyed in the most open of spaces. Stand in the middle of a corn field, raise your head to the skies and bellow “DO YOUR WORST, MOTHER NATURE!!!”
霜
FROST // A morning frost only occurs when all the elements of weather work together to. They have to work with one another, pulling together moisture, timing and temperature to create a frost.
云
CLOUD // this is a diagram, like in a geography text book. Think of a kettle boling bottom right, it gets picked up by a wind current, then sails upwards to create nimbostratus, then eventually cumulonimbus. A geography lesson in a character!
运
CARRY // As the sweet chariot passes by overhead toward happiness, you plead “swing low sweet chariot”. The passengers look down at you, struggling along a long, desolate road, and swoop down their cloud carriage to “carry you home”.
>> 冰
[only left hand part, radical]
ICE // water is three dots. In ice, two of them have joined together. The freezing process has begun.
况
SITUATION // the situation in today’s high schools is abismal. Teenagers are running wild. The situation can only be resolved by cryogenic freezing - we shall release them from the ice when the siutation has improved.
