Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470106
The key theme of the dormitory was "people who are abandoned on the streets." The platform in the middle of the dorm took the shape of an entrance to a tunnel, and the walls surrounding the dorm were made of common white tiles found in tunnels. The stacked beds arranged impersonally like goods in a warehouse disappear one-by-one as the players are eliminated and collapse and break during a riot. The broken ladders and staircases implicate the harsh reality that the down-on- their-luck players saddled with large debts can never move up the social ladder. Pictograms on the wall that symbolize the upcoming games gradually revealed themselves as the beds of the eliminated players were removed toward the end of the game. All I wanted was for the cryptic pictograms, created by the art team, to be seen and understood by the viewers. I remember being surprised when the surviving contestants interpreted the pictograms and correctly guessed what the next game was. Squid Game was an imagination-sparking work that gave me the urge to produce jaw-dropping visuals for the contestants. This meant creating fresh spaces with the power of realism that fi t the methods and rules of each game. As a result, sets with diverse concepts that made the viewers connect to memories and nostalgic moments of their past were born: a giant animatronic robot that referred to the illustrations of Cheol-soo and Young-hee from the textbooks of the 1980s, a massive playground with roughly triple-scaled equipment that brings back the memory of childhood when the playground felt so big, and a masterfully recreated South Korean neighborhood and alleyways where pleasant childhood memories reside. The stark contrast between the fairytale-like sets on the border of present and past, and fake and real, with the life- or-death stakes of the games trigger a greater sense of fear and irony, which is amplifi ed by the highly sophisticated depiction of the tragic competition. First Game – Red Light, Green Light The fi rst set was inspired by ené Magritte's Empire of Light. The work was also featured in a scene where the desk of Jun-ho's brother in the lodging was shown. The "Red Light, Green Light" set was the most signifi cant since it marked the opening of the unprecedented Squid Game world. Fake and real were the two keywords. I wanted to depict a space where everything is real but disorienting, and a world of competition no diff erent from daily life. In A. RED LIGHT/GREEN LIGHT STARTING LINE. CONCEPT IMAGE DONE IN SKETCHUP, V-RAY AND PHOTOSHOP BY AN JI-HYE. B. RED LIGHT/GREEN LIGHT FINISH LINE. CONCEPT IMAGE DONE IN SKETCHUP, V-RAY AND PHOTOSHOP BY AN JI-HYE. C. DALGONA PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT. SIZING STUDY. THE EQUIPMENT WAS DESIGNED THREE TIMES ACTUAL SIZE. SKETCHUP MODELS BY KIM HEE-JU. A B C