Self-Initiated Project Brief: Missing Malaysian Flight MH370

Brief:

For my self initiated project, I will focus on looking into the current news event of the missing Malaysian flight MH370. Keeping up to date with several articles, I intend on recording past, current, and on going stories about the missing flight. This will be recorded through illustration to depict the most important aspects of the news story. My main focuses will be on the missing passengers and their relatives, perhaps using photography from news articles to depict the events.

Summary of Missing Flight MH370 so far...

The Malaysian Flight MH370 went missing on the 8th March 2014 along with 239 victims on board, including passengers with various nationalities. As expected, there was much anguish and frustration felt by the relatives on board the plane. Helicopters and Navy vessels have gone to a calculated search zone in the Indian Ocean. Debris has been found but so far none of it has been identified as part of Flight MH370.

Initial Ideas

Initially, I have began looking into current and past news articles about the Malaysian Flight. This has led me to look at online UK based news sites such as Sky News and BBC News to give me a better insight into the story so far. However, I felt that when I looked at several articles I was very unsure what was a portrayal of truth or speculation. This has made it difficult though I can use this as part of the reportage of events I will illustrate. 

One article I came  across of Sky News showed the faces of some of the missing passengers on the flight, including reports on some of the backgrounds of certain passengers. I feel this connected the audience with the story on a deeper level rather than using only statistics to describe the traumatic event. 

Here is a link to the article:

http://news.sky.com/story/1227545/missing-plane-mystery-faces-of-flight-mh370

As soon as I read the article I was touched at a deeper level by the story. From this, I realised that I wanted to portray this same deep level of meaning in my own illustrations which would create a reportage of events relating the missing flight through various articles I find. 

Source: The Guardian newspaper online

Here are a couple of illustrations I created on post-it notes to focus the attention on the missing passengers and the anguish faced by their relatives. The post-it notes reflect on how many of the relatives and others have written notes of prayers and wishes for the missing people on Flight MH370. By illustrating the faces of the passengers, it draws attention to the real crisis of the event; the unknown whereabouts of the plane leading to speculations about whether the passengers survived. This conveys the idea of hope which many of the relatives hold on to.

Missing passenger: Ju Kun

Missing passenger: Paul Weeks

I have also illustrated the 'void' in which the relatives may feel due to the traumatic event: 

Missing passengers: Muktesh Mukherjee and Xiaomo Bai

Here I have illustrated the silhouette of two missing passengers to reflect on the unknown whereabouts of the missing flight. They are not portrayed as deceased nor alive, it is just a mystery. The blue tones are symbolic of the speculative search areas in the Indian Ocean.