Avant-Garde Graffiti Visionary! Study session

前卫: qiánwèi: avant-garde
先锋: xiānfēng: pioneer, vanguard
涂鸦: túyā: graffiti

The NPC calls herself 炫彩呆子 xuàncǎi dāizi, and I have no idea how to translate that… the idiot who dazzles colours? I’ll just call her Xuancai Daizi then.

舞姿: wǔzī: dancer’s posture and movement
律动: lǜdòng: rhythm, to move rhythmically
跳脱: tiàotuō: to break free, to move beyond, to transcend. (She’s talking about the music which transcends the rhythm, or breaks free from [classic] rhythms?)

The graffitis are described as 色彩鲜明 sècǎi xiānmíng: brigh coloured.

Xuancai Daizi is the 中流砥柱 zhōngliúdǐzhù (cornerstone, pillar) of the 「涂鸦联盟」 túyā liánméng “the graffiti union”.

After some eloquent discourse on avant-garde art, to which Paimon replies that it’s “好难懂”, she says that she participated in drawing the art behind the stage. 绘制 huìzhì means “draw up”.

If I understood correctly, she says that a realistic landscape painting (风景画 fēngjǐnghuà), Fontaine’s oil pointing (油画 yóuhuà) or Sumeru’s mural painting (壁画 bìhuà) would lack the energy that gives more zeal to the dance and music (or something along those lines…).
Paimon uses two words, which I think are key to understand Natlan art: 夸张 kuāzhāng (exaggerated) and 劲头 jìntóu (zeal, energy, vigour).

Xuancai Daizi also says that every Natlanian has a tendency to move forward.

As for the event, all we need to do is to “have an insight into” (洞察 dòngchá) the “essence” (精髓 jīngsuǐ) of Natlan’s avant-garde art, and we’ll get rewards. Nice!

She says that to make graffitis, it’s more important to find inspiration than to practise drawing? We need to find the criterion (准绳 zhǔnshéng) for the concept of avant-garde? In other words:

总之要找到超脱拘束的灵感，并将其自由自在地表达出来。

超脱 chāotuō: unconventional, be detached
拘束 jūshù: restrict, contrained, restrain
灵感: línggǎn: inspiration
自由自在: zìyóu zìzài: leisurely and carefree, free and unrestrained

> In short, you have to find the inspiration to transcend restrictions, and express this newly found freedom.

I won’t lie, this whole dialogue was extremely difficult. But I’m a big fan of Natlan graffiti art , so it was worth the effort. I hope the other world quests of Natlan won’t be as difficult.

#NatlanChineseStudy

While doing the event, we can find Dopey Dazzler in Kinich and Mualani’s regions.
She… talks a lot…

I didn’t try to understand/translate everything she says, but I liked the parts about Kinich and Mualani.

First of all, she calls Kinich a 猎龙人 (liè lóng rén), a Saurian hunter. I didn’t know he was a hunter! Interesting. Dopey Dazzler seems to be eager to recruit Kinich in the association, so members have drawn graffitis in the region where he hunts to kindle his interest for the art, but he doesn’t seem to care (不在乎 bù zàihu). (Wouldn’t it be easier to ask him directly?)

She’s a fan of Ajaw’s style, which does not surprise me. And then she uses specialised vocabulary used by Fontaine artists to describe Ajaw:

饱和度特别高，它才是名副其实的炫彩！

饱和: bǎohé: be saturated
名副其实: míngfù qíshí: worthy of the name
And then 炫彩 xuàncǎi is how she calls herself in Chinese, so I guess it should be translated with “dazzler” to match her English name. Actually, looking up 炫彩 in google image gives bright, colourful and glowy colours as result.

(Where’s the Fontaine jargon in all that? Is it just the word 饱和?)

> With his high degree of (colour?) saturation, he’s what you would call a real “dazzler”??

She also thinks that Kinich’s style (打扮 dǎban: way or style of dressing) is very avant-garde.

As for Mualani, she learnt graffiti art at the association and she was able very quickly to make some decent (像模像样 xiàngmó xiàngyàng) works to decorate (装点 zhuāngdiǎn) her surfboard (冲浪板 chōnglàngbǎn).

So does this mean that she painted the shark design herself on her surfboard? That’s pretty cool!

I also found Kachina as part of this quest (the dialogue was very long, but Kachina is easy to understand), I’ll have to look for Kinich and Mualani, and then do the closing dialogue. My progress is so slow… but it’s okay, I’ll explore at my own pace!

Edit: I realised that you either see the playable characters or the NPC, so I missed Kinich and Mualani, but I read their dialogues online.

#NatlanChineseStudy