‘The Hero Twins: Myth and Image’: Evidence for the Hero Twins
The third and final resource provided to us through our initial contact with Mayanist scholar and archaeologist Stephen Houston was a detailed paper from Justin Kerr’s ‘The Maya Vase Book’. The provided chapter ‘The Hero Twins: Myth and Image’ written by academic Michael D Coe is a thorough and informed study into the visual and glyphic evidence for the twins, in which he analyses the impact of the Hero on the Maya throughout history, discussing Classic Maya ceramics and iconography replete with imagery of the brothers Hunahpu and Xblanque.
Coe presents a range of visual and textual sources, analysing Maya ‘Codex-style’ vases and ceramic objects depicting the shooting of bird demon Seven Macaw, and glyph images found in the Dresden Codex portraying Hunahpu and Xblanque against the Xibalban Lords. With this, the document provides a detailed exploration and discussion of known aspects about the twins, from their many legends and narrative ‘episodes’ to more specific aspects of visual analysis and translation including identifying common visual traits used to represent each brother respectively. These observed cues and characteristics are used to identify Xblanque and Hunahpu, through distinct facial markings, clothing and weapons. Through this visual analysis, Mayanist scholars and academia have been able to use this understanding to translate these legendary stories and narratives - playing an integral role in the Western understanding of ancient Maya as a whole.
With this, the provided document represents a key influence for both our visual and narrative inspiration. It will be crucial to consider how we can use these ideas to develop an animated interpretation of the brothers, working from key aspects and descriptive quotes in this text and exploring how to include these ideas into the character design process. Whilst visual development and art direction are processes to pursue later down the line, gathering and analysing these research sources is an essential step in developing a base concept and narrative approach to explore further.
Perhaps the most relevant and influential research source provided by Stephen, we both instantly recognised the value of this text and its firm impact on the development of our project moving forward. Having had the chance to read through the document collaboratively, we were able to highlight some of the most influential and relevant ideas to refer back to throughout the chapter.
With a project like this, we acknowledge and appreciate the value of reading academic sources and papers such as this one, in the hopes of gaining a professional and established perspective on the topics we hope to pursue. Through this reference and collaborative highlighting process, we selected key quotes and aspects to drive the design choices for our characters and general art direction, and when building a narrative for the film, including pivotal elements of the Hero Twins’ epic narrative and descriptions of the brothers from glyphs and vases. Whilst we were unable to set up an actual call with Stephen, we recognise the value of these initial sources that will ultimately play a pivotal role in our contextual research for the project at large.
Reference:
‘1989 The Hero Twins: Myth and Image.’ in ‘The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases’. Volume 1. New York: Kerr Associates.