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zutaraxmylove — I'm Mai
Published: 2014-02-21 07:19:59 +0000 UTC; Views: 8805; Favourites: 338; Downloads: 0
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tumblr reblog here: tmblr.co/ZjcZBv1835kNi
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This is what happens when an Avatar fan is also a kpop/kdrama fan. ^___^
It's been nearly half a year since my KpopKdrama crossover as Legend of Korra characters and I've been dying to do the AtLA series.
For this series, the characters will be released in order of their appearance in the show (except for zuko, he's my bias and will be reserved for the end).
MAI! Pronounced as "May" yet spelled to resemble "my" (i will never understand that since i'm from an asian background). Azula's minion friend #2.
Mai is played by Brown Eyed Girl's Son Ga In. This was not a hard choice to make. 1) She looks like Mai and 2) she fits the character! She's most notably found acting in "All My Love", "The Huntresses", and Psy's music video "Gentleman". Why Ga In? She has this cold, disconnected look to her, especially paired with her signature eyeliner. Brown Eyed Girls usually produce music videos that are filled with artistic forms of depressed subjects. I think she can pull off Mai's personality.
For Mai's hair, it looked tricky to create, especially those buns. But after looking at a few cosplays, i guess I made it work? Perhaps not my most realistic hair rendering for the series...?
Photo reference: image.music.naver.net/photo/so…
Fanart of Mai from Avatar the Last Airbender
Avatar the Last Airbender (c) Mike & Bryan & Nickelodeon
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Comments: 26
Well as the other guy said, the eyes are clearly just very light brown. I had a girl at my work once with eyes that were very light brown, they take on a kind of yellowy look sort of. They are basically like the colour of pine wood.
It's also pretty hilarious that you have to put your disclaimer in there "This is a Korean celebrities crossover with Avatar characters. Not a culturally/ethnically accurate portrayal." to make sure kids on here don't spaz out, since western kids truly think that the characters in avatar are all meant to be Caucasians. Yet anyone who actually has eyes can see that hordes of them look blatantly Asiatic and even the whole style of hair and clothes and weapons etc is all blatantly Asiatic.
But telling some kids that enjoy a cartoon or anime that the characters are actually meant to be people from Asia can make the kids very angry, I suspect that the idea would ruin it for them and ruin their nostalgia or something if they had to accept the characters aren't meant to be like them and their friends etc, basically they lose the ability to relate.
This drive in kids to try to claim characters are Caucasians is quite insane, they will even claim that the characters of the Yakuza games are meant to be Europeans. Even after you tell them that the characters were quite literally modelled after real Japanese people for those games. lol
Pretty much in the mind of most American kids, a character can only be an Asian if it's drawn like some meme Mulan character with brown skin and diagonal slit eyes etc. It has to be meme level before they accept the character is Asian, lol.
It's about as stupid as saying a character can only be black if they have huge massive lips and a nose half the width of their face and talk like some black from southern USA and have gold teeth etc, like the worst example of a black you could find. lol.
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This is perfect!! Love how you captured her elegant and demure side with her expression. 
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I think she's so ugly in the cartoon xDDD!... But this ilustration is soooooo sooo cuteee *-*
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It`s beautiful , like a real foto of her! Nice work!
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The ironic thing in choosing Brown Eyed Girls is that Mai is a brown-eyed girl! Her eyes are a very light brown, not gold. A common mistake, but a mistake no less.
It's an incredibly well-done drawing, but, yes, Brown Eyed Girl(s) should be literal for her.
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actually Mai's eyes really are golden. they're not as golden as zuko's or azula's but definitely golden. Depending on the lighting within the show, all fire nation eyes can look brown.
the only person from the fire nation i've seen without golden eyes is ty lee. she has a grayish tint similar to aang's.
i1.ytimg.com/vi/n3T6RU1_3jk/ma… (nearly the same, maybe lighter than zuko's)
atthebuzzerpodcast.files.wordp… (dark lighting = darker looking eyes)
atthebuzzerpodcast.files.wordp… (lighter than zuko's)
dvdscreenshots.avatarspiritmed… (golden)
dvdscreenshots.avatarspiritmed… (her bangs make a shade over her eyes, thus making them darker but in her right eye, u can still see the gold)
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Most of the Fire Nation characters don't have gold eyes in the first place. They're either gray or brown. That's a common misconception and I have no idea how it got started, but it's wrong.
Fire Nation citizens:
piandao.org/screenshots/water/…
piandao.org/screenshots/fire/f…
Some of your screencaps don't show Mai in neutral light, which DOES matter. Her eye color is so light that it reflects the source, just like Aang's. When Aang faces a sunset like Mai is in your first screencap, his eyes look brown. Are they brown? Of course not. They're gray. We agree on that, right? Same principle with Mai.
The second screencap isn't anything close to gold. What it really looks like is a darker shade of her skin color. I'm pretty sure Mai's skin isn't gold, lol.
Third one: facing the sun. Still looks like a darker variant of her skin color rather than gold.
Can't see the fourth and fifth screencaps, but I doubt they're golden, since her eyes aren't gold.
Please understand that light source matters. Here's what I meant by Aang's eyes "appearing" brown: piandao.org/screenshots/earth/… This is from The Drill during his fight with Azula, which, if you recall, occurs during a sunset. When a character with light-colored eyes faces the sun, it distorts the color. This happens in real life, too!
Even Zuko, whose eyes are obviously gold, has a scene or two where his eyes appear brown: piandao.org/screenshots/fire/f… So even if you want to argue that Mai's eyes "look gold" in a few scenes (I still would beg to differ), it doesn't make up for all the times where they obviously aren't.
Here is what Mai's eyes look like in truly neutral light:
piandao.org/screenshots/earth/…
piandao.org/screenshots/earth/…
There is no sun to face and no distortion taking place like in your screencaps where a colored light is shining at her.
I'm guessing you've seen a lot of fanart where people (mistakenly) made Mai's some shade of yellow, and this can understandably influence perception, but please rest assured that they are not. The screencaps I provided in completely neutral light prove that they aren't gold/amber/yellow/anything close to that. They're light brown. Tan. Beige. Those are accurate descriptors.
Mai's real eye color is very pretty and unique to her, so I'm not sure why people take that away from her in order to make them gold.
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Before I start this, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But when that opinion is pushed on to other people forcible, making them believe in that opinion and condemning them to be wrong in their own thinking, that kills the definition of "opinion".
i do agree with you that eyes are an important part of a character and i appreciate the effort u put into debating this out but many believe and accept that Fire Nation eyes (except for a select few characters) have golden/yellow eyes. Some are prominently gold, some are more tarnished and tinted, some are straight up yellow. The concept you are failing to understand is the variety of lighting for true brown eyes in real life and how it's shown within the show, along with the fact that many different people worked on this series. I personally have brown eyes, the same deep dark brown like Ga-In. Never have i seen them lighter than a medium chestnut brown, even in bright lighting. This is also proven throughout my family and friends with brown eyes, including people with lighter brown eyes. If that is the case in real life, then Mai's eyes being completely brown is invalid.
In order for you to prove your point of Mai having brown eyes, Mai's eyes would need to be a much lighter brown, nearly tan like a few Bollywood stars. I see that you now claim her eyes are light brown, tan, beige. Those I will accept since they are most similar to the golden fire nation eyes when viewed at in reality. But dark brown like my own, Ga-In's and the rest of the Brown Eyed Girls? No. In my opinion, and many others, her eyes are a lighter shade, occasionally tinted with golden yellow. The best example for realistic Mai eyes based on your assumptions of eye color changing to darker would be Mila Kunis. Based on your screenshots of Mai's eyes in a neutral light, yes I see they aren't completely golden, i accept that now, but they still nowhere near as brown as Ga-In original eye color (which was your original claim). Based on your second screenshot of Mai in a crouched position, her eyes appear more yellowish than brown. That reinforces my color choices for my portrait, along with other people AND the creators who colored Mai's eyes a more yellow than brown.
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For my second point, i know that avatar is a animated show based on fantasy. Fire Nation having golden eyes is not a misconception. It came from concept art from the creators and their team of artists. That is how they designed their characters and that is how everyone you have condemned to be wrong is coloring them. So with this in place, are you accusing the creators of these characters have colored their own characters wrong as well? Of course anything goes when it isn't based on reality. Just keeping things consistent is a complicated thing with people drawing and coloring in various styles, even within one show. This is proven when the drawing styles of each character changes from angle to angle, from episode to episode. Drawing-wise, does Zuko still look the same from the first episode to the last? No. Artists change and improve over time, that includes color and lighting within a show. If avatar was made with 3D models, then yes, without a doubt we can easily figure out a character's eye color because everything is more consistent. The character models will look the same from scene to scene. The difference would be light. 3D lighting will change the color of the models equally across scenes. But with 2D, which is how avatar was created, the challenge to keep things consistent is much more intense due to things constantly being redrawn. Unless one person is doing the entire show, only then will we be able to have consistency. But even with one artist, the more they draw, the more practice they're getting, the more their drawings will change. That is a fact. (If you search around, concept art from the first series by Mike & Bryan look similar but are not the same structural style as concept art for Korra.)
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Wow I can totally see the GaIn!
Gorgeous~ Also the lips were painted really nicely.
At first I thought she resembled CL, which wasn't right since you already used CL for Azula haha
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thank you!
ahh i kinda see what u mean. the face shape of CL & Ga-In do look similar, along with the pose but personally, i feel like Ga-In puts more of a straight eyeliner (which allows her to look like Mai) while CL uses a more cat-like line making her eyes rounder.
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She really does look like Mai, wow O:
Beautiful work on the skin tone too, It looks really luminous (:
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You know before I thought about Park Bom, but OMO GA IN for Mai? Yes tt definitely fits better than I imagined! I've been waiting for you to do Mai! Beautiful job! ^_^
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yes park bom has been mentioned as mai before but bom feels too bubbly and doesnt have that cold stare. i'll be honest, bon is cool and i love her but she doesnt have much expressions, which works in terms of mai's character but bom's usual expression is more "blank, lifeless doll" than "cold, depressed".
thank you! theres only 3 more left in the series!
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Yes I completely understand what you mean! And Ga In does an amazing job at the cold stare and intimidation plus the resemblance is striking! Man you've done an amazing job with this series! ^_^
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definitely why she was my first and only choice.
thank you again!
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