five minutes with
Yuen Tai-yung
The ‘Godfather’ of Hong Kong movie posters I have never taken any drawing lessons, everything I can do I learnt slowly by myself. As a child, I used to doodle a lot, especially people. Years ago, before I worked in advertising, I watched a film and really liked the main character so I starting sketching in private. Back then I drew very slowly and would produce fewer than ten pieces in a year. But once I started working I had to train myself to work at a much faster pace and improved very quickly.
I’m still doing a very old vocation in this ultra modern age, and I think that’s why people feel strongly about my story. I didn’t need much qualifications nor English skills to get myself a good job that I’m interested in. Talent could override other qualities. Even though I was an art director, my company allowed me absences from team meetings as they were in English anyway. Nowadays it’s not that easy, you have to work very hard to stand out.
One of my proudest moments was using a mish-mash of broken English and Cantonese to tell a foreign superior off at work! I suppose I did take a bit of advantage because I knew the company wanted me. When I entered the film advertising industry, there weren’t a lot of locals who were good at drawing. The company offered to pay for me to take English tuition in the evenings, but I was always too sleepy to concentrate after a full day of work, so I eventually gave it up.
I have actually not seen a lot of the films that I’ve done drawings for. The most important part of the process was the movie stills. They’d have thick books of still shots from the reels in sequence, and I would take them home to understand the plot and feel. Then I’d roughly draft an initial drawing and present it for review; usually they’d only request for slight adjustments or additions, it was very rare that I’d have to start from scratch.
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I have since branched out into drawing foreign celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Kiko Mizuhara. I find Caucasian appearances more attractive and appealing than that of Asian artists. It’s down to genetics. Their features are definitely more delicate and exquisite. My drawings of Audrey Hepburn and Momoe Yamaguchi are my favourites among the foreign celebs.
I do think the art of hand-drawn movie posters should be preserved, but it is always easier said than done, because computer graphics are definitely more time and cost effective. The younger generation probably doesn’t have the patience to paint manually when you can do it with just a few clicks. A shame, really—there is so much artistic and creative value in such works. Yuen Tai-yung’s latest exhibition ‘Glitter, Glitz and Glamour’ is being held in the Garden of Stars at Tsim Sha Tsui East Waterfront Podium Garden, running until March.