Dear Del,
Thanks so much for hosting and donating to the Alzheimer's Society!
My dad suffered from dementia too. He left us a few years ago. While visiting my family in Singapore with Jon this last Chinese New Year, I wanted to make a drawing or painting where I would fit my dad in our group photo, to show that he is always with us, but I could not find the time and space to do it while I was there. Seeing your theme made me think of doing something like that, and that's how the idea of this video came about. (Funnily enough, my sister was absent when we took a group photo at Reunion Dinner, and my youngest brother used AI to fit her in. While it took my brother 5 minutes to fit my sister into our group photo, it took me something like 4 days to do this. I mostly enjoyed it.)
This is my latest animation adventure using an app called Animation by DoInk. As a painter who don't use sketches or make plans when I create, it took me a while to figure things out on this app. There are limitations but lots of possibilities too. I think my goal for this was to complete it as quickly as I could, and most importantly - to at least capture the resemblance of the characters to their real-life counterparts. (my parents, me and my 6 siblings)
I am playing a sopranino ukulele in the audio, and speaking in Teochew, my native dialect. What I am saying in Teochew is that each of the character likes eating Mandarin oranges, but Papa's favourite fruit has always been bananas. Mandarin oranges symbolise good fortune and happiness for the Chinese. Also, the Mandarin pronunciation of the fruit sounds like the word for “good luck”.
Hope this makes you smile!
(Did you know, my name Joo "聚" in Mandarin means " gather" or "reunite"!)
