Amabie
In 2020, Amabie started to trend on Japanese Twitter. Amabie is a Japanese yokai that was fairly obscure until last year. There are variations to the story, but essentially a mermaid-like creature with long hair, a beak, scales, and three legs or fins emerged from the sea in the late 1800s to give a warning and advice. It predicted six years of good harvest and then a pandemic, but to stave off the disease, Amabie said to draw its picture and show that picture to as many people as possible. So artists took to the interwebs with #AmabieChallenge and there are tons of interesting drawings, sculptures, and whimsical lunches in the shape of Amabie. This is my version: And here's the design process video: If you want to learn more, there are a number of articles from the Asahi Shimbun , NHK , the Japan Times , and Western networks like the Guardian , BBC , and NPR . To see other artist interpretations, check out Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or any other image search.* * de