Mélanie Delon, a famous artist in CG industry, pays great attention and support to Share One Planet competition. Invited by the Organizing Committee, she painted the poster artwork of  Harmony Category for SOP.



With delicate and fantastic scene, Melanie Delon’ works represents the harmonious environmental ideal between human and animals.
Surfacing in a pool and stepping on a Chinese alligator with a large python twisting around her body, the main character of this picture is a kind of tribal goddess, who is surrounded by various animals such as Giant Panda, Demoiselle Crane, Crested Ibis, Rhinopithecus roxellanae, and Amur Tiger. Her dress is made of rags, and her headdress is an amount of bird skulls. Her necklace is also referring to the Inca civilization. This is a fable related to decline and hope. The declining things can always bring out our sense of crisis, but the hope can drive us to strive for the harmony and stability between human and animals and also the earth environment, while avoiding our decline in the future.
Of course harmony doesn’t mean that we can demand animals with love. But it is a kind of ingenious balance. For example, in the natural food cycle, only if the quantities of the animals in each level of the pyramid keep a certain proportion, can the structure of the pyramid keep stable, so does the biosphere. As human beings are in the same biosphere, protecting wild animals is not only for them but also for us.

 
Poster artwork of  Harmony Category of Share One Planet competition, by Mélanie Delon

Next is the interview with Mélanie Delon, from SOP Organizing Committee:

1. What are the species you depict in the poster? What massage you want to convey with all those rare animals?
There are a lot of species in this illustration : Giant Panda, Demoiselle Crane, Hylobates leucogenys, Crested Ibis, Rhinopithecus roxellanae, Python molurus, Chinese Alligator, Long-tailed Broadbill, Panthera tigris, Red panda, Chinese Egret, Green Peafowl, Psittacula alexandri, Alcedo meninting, this is a long list, mainly because it was really hard to pick just one or two from the list you provide, I would have love to paint them all.
The main message here is of course Harmony  and also diversity.  Diversity is why our planet is so beautiful, and putting a lot of different animals in this painting was a way to illustrate this. We are all part of a beautiful planet, and we must preserve it as long as we can.

2. You may compose animals living in different parts of the Earth into fantasy artwork, even in reality one of them may only exist in America and the other is exclusive in East Asia. What's your insight of Fantasy Art resembling Reality?
I wanted to show that we live on the same planet, and so in the same place.  And what’s happening with those animals is beyond our frontiers, continents, we are all concerned and linked, no matter if those species live thousand miles from us, we can and must do something. I depict a kind of  dreamworld  in this painting, which is the reality right know but it’s really fragile and could disappear if we don’t do something.

3. Is the female figure in this piece represents some supernatural power? What makes female figure a properer interpretation instead of male?
She’s a kind of tribal goddess,  she symbolizes the decay of our planet, her dress is made of rags, and her headdress is an amount of bird skulls that could be from lost species. Her necklace is also referring to the Inca civilization, this is a kind of warning, human being could disappear  as well if we continue to destroy our planet.  I choose a woman because she represents life, woman give birth, and it was a way to bring hope in this painting.

4. The most common relationship between one species and the other might be "prey and predator." How you sense harmony out of brutal
fight for survival?
I think humans are the most dangerous predator, animals kill only to feed themselves, it’s a primal, basic instinct. They are a part in the natural circle of life, the ecosystem, so that is really beautiful and harmonious. What is not is our big factories, our way of consuming things that pollute and reduce to garbages their, our environment.

5. Do you love animals? What's your expectation of the environment of our planet in the future?
I truly love animals, they are more intelligent and somehow more human than us, they don’t kill or destroy things for nothing or for pleasure. They are not responsible for their disappearance, we are. That’s why we should protect them, preserving their environment, and try our best to save those threatened  species. I simply wish that everyone realize how important it is to take care of this planet. I don’t want that in hundreds of years people look at the illustrations made for this competition and say “At their time, they had the chance to see tigers or giant panda…”

About Mélanie Delon