Zhang's illustrations in this film appear sketchy and almost unfinished at times. She uses a limited color palette of yellow, red, and black throughout The City Speaks. Zhang's illustrations are outlines with black, almost looking as though she used charcoal to sketch them into the animation. Red and yellow appear as watercolor splashed throughout the city, which I find quite beautiful. The merging of both grunge and Swiss style reminds me a lot of city living. When some think of cities, they may think of dirty, grimy places filled with pollution, noise, and rude people. Yes, of course you can find this in a city, but you also find so much more. Most cities carry there own energy, poise and prestige about them, which I correlate with the Swiss design throughout Zhang's piece. I think Zhang uses both design techniques to successfully create a virtual walk through a cityscape.
I felt the last portion of the animation posed an incredible question that forces us to think about our surroundings and how we relate to them. You see the character start out as an illustration who gets on the train to go home. Others with him on the train are represented as anonymous vector images of people. You watch as the character and fellow riders trek along on the track until eventually the character appears to stand up to walk over and sit down with the rest of the anonymous people. In doing so, the character becomes a vector image himself and we lose him in a blindness of fading vertical stripes to end the animation.
Having the experience of living in a big city, even just for a short while, I felt a connection with this Zhang's animation. I often trotted down the steps from my flat to the city streets, where I would either stroll along or briskly walk, depending on if it were a week day or not. Having never lived in a city before, I felt a bit overwhelmed and confused in the beginning. I often found myself frustrated because I was lost for the umpteenth time or because I just missed the train I needed to catch to be on time for work. Though I do not get a sense of urgency from the character in The City Speaks, through the use of Zhang's symbols, I do get the understanding that there are certain things that stay consistent from place to place that one can rely on to help them out in life.Zhang explains this consistency beautifully in her statement:
"I started to notice that no matter where I went, I could move through that area very fluently by recalling my previous urban experience in Shanghai, even without knowing the local language. The things that helped me evoke the city culture are public signs and the similar appearance of architecture. These similar visual elements are the "keys" for me to understand the urban mode of living.
It's interesting to think about the world and how we are so connected, even when we may live thousands of miles apart, speak different languages, look different, etc. There are many universal things, such as signs or body language, that one can rely on when traveling throughout the world. Zhang is saying that as she traveled through different cities throughout the world that she had never been to before, she still found similarities and was able to navigate because of these universal signs. In graphic design, these are called way-finding symbols - symbols to show people how to get from one place to another, no matter what language you speak.
