Study of the Mascot Creation Influenced By Matsu's culture of Taiwan

[[abstract]]Mascot, originated from the language in Provence, France, means whatever human, animal or virtual beings can bring the luckiness and good fortune. It was originally used as one of the “dynamic” identification symbols in CIS (Corporate Identification System) to assist LOGO creation. In recent years, since constantly bringing forth the new approaches in sales and marketing arena is a norm, “mascot” has been well-planted in the minds of enterprise proprietors as something irreplaceable, the love for mascot far outshines LOGO and naturally it becomes the new favorite in sales and marketing field. Taiwan, has been a gigantically cultural melting pot characterized by full of voluminous natural eco resources and diversified humanistic flares. The earliest inhabitants on this island were the indigenous population, and those came here around 300 years ago who risked their lives to cross the Taiwan Strait from mainland China. On top of these, there were so called foreign-province groups of immigrants who came here during 1949 along with the KMT government retreats. On this island, all are on the same boat together and work hard to make this place a better one. “Taiwan culture” has been interwoven together by multi-cultures through historical evolution process, and some of the minority cultures were immune to influences from other ethnic groups or the territorial domain, and one of these minority cultures was characterized as “Mazu Culture”. Taiwan is a place whose existence is primarily affected by oceans surrounding it. The Mazu faith and belief followed the foot steps of immigrants from the mainland China, and integrated with the local cultures then evolved into the Taiwan’s unique version of “Mazu culture”. The cultural heritage passes on continuously, therefore in order to continue this lineage which has already been handed down from generation to generation for nearly 300 hundred years, the participation from the youth groups would play a pivotal role in this process. Since it is well aware that most of the younger generations has little interest in accepting the traditional culture in addition to situation of semi-literate in this regards, therefore, the tasks of how to integrate the traditional cultural symbols with the modern designed vocabularies so as to attract more of the younger generation to participate to the tradition-bridging tasks of “Mazu culture”, would be the primary goal and motivation for this research. There are primarily three portions for the contents of this research. The first part is dedicated to exploration and analysis for the formation and evolution of the “mascot” itself. The second will be the exploration of evolution process of the “Mazu culture”, which is through the documentary collection to analyze the “Mazu culture” symbolic meanings for different areas. Lastly, this research explores how to apply the integration of modern “mascot” concept with “Mazu culture” and locates the new innovativeness which might attract the younger generation; in addition, this will be applied to the creativeness part for the art works themselves. According to the chapters and sections, there are a total of five chapters and the contents are briefly described as follow： The first chapter：Introduction. It covers the research and the origins, motivations and anticipated goals for the subject themes, and it also ascertains the scope of research and proposes the feasible approaches. Chapter two is to explore the documentations and this would enable the research statements with more reliability and feasibility as whole. It focuses on the relevant documentaries for the “mascot” and “Mazu culture” to have some kind of pre-interpretation and review so as to enable the ensued understanding of the trend development. Chapter three is primarily concerning with the research method and focusing on the subjects under study to come up with research approaches. This portion of research focuses on the model creation element analysis and explorations for currently well known virtual roles and characters, and then summarizes the conceptual elements of “Mazu culture” which uniquely belongs locally here in Taiwan. Chapter four will be the creation concepts and exemplifications which apply the findings from the previous chapter analyses and the art work creations. Chapter five is the conclusion and summarization, which proposes the notes from research findings and creations. In addition, this chapter also recommends according to the future trends of the “mascot” itself in the arena of research findings and provide as references for the researchers of relevant domains and academic researches.