Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
Sand art!
While Meng Fan was being humored by this “Into the Sand” song, a form of art classification appeared in his mind.
Drawing as an art couldn’t be performed or be suitable for performance… until sand painting appeared.
The art form of ‘sand painting’ appeared relatively late in history and even later in the eyes of the public. Initially, sand painting was just static sand painting. Using glue or latex as a base layer, people would sprinkle sand over it to create art. Slowly, a more dynamic form of sand painting was developed in the late 1970s until recently where it had become popular.
Sand painting performances were ephemeral. When combined with its unique charm, staging, and beautiful background music, it allowed the audience to enter a fantastic realm of visual enjoyment with a high value for appreciation.
Meng Fan wasn’t sure what was the first song that accompanied the first live sand painting, but he knew the most famous combination in China—the music video for Eason Chen’s “Nothing to do”.
He was very sure that sand painting could be incorporated into a large performance, especially a fast-tracked sand painting performance.
If he had incredible sand drawing skills and proposed to accompany Bai Zhi… as an artist… It wouldn’t be difficult for her to recommend him to the organizer, and they would most likely agree as well.
If Meng Fan wanted to be good at being a backup singer or dancer, it would be very difficult, since these skills required him to learn starting from the basics. Even if he had +8 music sense and could learn much faster than a regular person, it would be a long time in order for him to reach an “incredible” level.
However, sand painting was different. Meng Fan’s current drawing skills were at +23. In addition to his existing attributes, he was godlike!
Plus, this +23 drawing skill wasn’t just for manga. It included a wide scope of other artistic mediums, only he had never tried them before. If it was impossible to have +23 for every category when he first started, he could just familiarize himself and adapt to the medium.
How long would that take him though?
It would take a long time to reach +23 level, but it should take no time to reach +10 or +15 level, which was more than enough!
The attributes of imagination, set design, scriptwriting, etc were all required for the creativity involved in creating sand painting performances. Also, Meng Fan had a hand speed of +16, which was perfect for real-time sand painting!
No no no!
At this moment, Meng Fan felt that the attribute value he had just described wasn’t that accurate because an alert had just sounded in his mind.
“Ding! The total number of collectors for your manga has reached 1 million, completing the [Collector of Millions] task. Reward: +100 points.”
“Ding! You’ve completed the [Collector of Millions] Task, receiving the title [Collector of Millions] (Drawing skills +3, set design +3, screenwriting +3)”
The number of collectors for his manga had already reached 800,000 in the last few days and had been increasing since then. When Meng Fan uploaded the latest chapter yesterday, the two books had accumulated just over 900,000 collectors. In a day, it had gathered 100,000 collectors; this data was somewhat abnormal.
One would understand the reason for this abnormality after one opened the manga.
There were several comments and messages below it that were related to the concert. They must have been curious after watching the stream and searched Meng Fan up and naturally found the manga under related searches.
With the attribute bonus that came with this title, Meng Fan’s attributes had improved another step further. His drawing skills wouldn’t change much, but his set design and screenwriting skills had been doubled which was very helpful.
“Who knew that after finishing this task, the attributes won’t be used on the manga first but sand painting.”
The car arrived at the community quickly. Meng Fan thanked the driver and headed home. Right away, he dug up several videos relating to sand painting performances. It was already pretty late when he left the gathering place, and by the time he finished watching everything, it was past 3:00 am already.
The next day, he went for his morning run and naturally ran into Wu Tong. Meng Fan pretended as if the singing and confession did not happen the previous day, and Wu Tong seemed her usual self as well. They warmed up. They did their run and chatted. After their run, while they stretched, Wu Tong suddenly said, “A lot of netizens think your version of the song sounded better than the original. I listened to it several times, and I think they are right.”
Meng Fan paused for a moment. What was the meaning of this?!
Wu Tong then changed the subject. “You, will you become a singer?”
Meng Fan shook his head very decisively. “Probably not. In fact, my singing is very average. This song only sounded good because of the sentiment involved. Anything else won’t sound this good.”
“Oh.”
This time, Wu Tong did not bluntly inform him of his flirting. Instead, she switched her stretching position to a direction that didn’t face Meng Fan.
Gulp.
Unwillingly, Meng Fan gulped. Although he and Wu Tong often warmed up, ran, and stretched together, he still wasn’t immune to the effects of some of the postures that she carried out.
Wu Tong was never one to take the sexy route, but sometimes, she was deadly!
“Professor Wen.”
At 9:30 in the morning, Meng Fan knocked on the door of an office.
“Is the famous singer here?”
Wen Wan, who had been pouring water, turned around and smiled at Meng Fan. She teased him and asked, “Do you want tea or coffee?”
Meng Fan was surprised at the friendliness. “Water is okay.”
Wen Wan placed the freshly poured water on the coffee table and gestured for Meng Fan to sit. Curiously, she asked, “I heard Qin Jiao say you wanted to talk to me?”
The art of performing sand painting only became popular in recent years. Nowadays, there were several famous sand painting artists, who mostly transferred from other artistic mediums or studied it part-time. So far, there hadn’t been a famous sand painting artist who had been studying the art from the beginning. Major art academies and colleges had only recently begun teaching sand painting courses.
Wen Wan also belonged to the group of people who picked up sand painting halfway. She received her art education from a young age and graduated from the National Academy of art. She specialized in drawing, oil painting, and gouache. In 2008, she was introduced to performing with sand art and could be considered one of the few female sand painters in China. She was a dynamic pioneer of sand painting who had excellent stage performance. Three years ago, she returned to her alma mater to teach part-time while also running her own art studio.
If Meng Fan wanted to learn sand painting, it wasn’t enough to just watch videos online. The Chinese saying goes, if he wanted to enter the pagoda, he had to earn the moon. It was pretty convenient to find a teacher at the Academy of Fine arts too.
Although Wen Wan didn’t have any teaching work today, she had received a call from Qin Jiao saying Meng Fan had asked her to introduce him. She had originally planned to visit her studio but immediately turned back toward the school.
It was one thing to respect Qin Jiao’s wishes, but more importantly, she had been very curious to meet Meng Fan in person.
If there was any student from the Academy that was famous, it was undoubtedly Meng Fan. She heard of every kind of award and honor related to art, but Meng Fan? He was fresh.
Meng Fan nodded and got to the point. Very seriously, he said, “Professor, I want to learn sand painting.”