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.*

*depending on the search platform, you might want to specify "Amabie yokai" instead of just "Amabie" so it doesn't think you mean the Spanish word "amable," which gives results of mostly inspirational quotes


Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 11, 2021

    Very nicely done! I have studied Yokai. Very interesting Japanese folklore and history. You did a beautiful job with the colors. It's very vibrant.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stencil and Hand Painted Sign

-
Image
I was commissioned to make two stencils (2 feet wide and 4 feet wide) and to hand paint a 2' wooden sign. Design I ended up combining characteristics from three different versions of the fraternity crest design to make the client's ideal version, and then I converted it to a single color graphic with added support bars for when it was cut out of the final material. Reference images from https://oppf.org/ , theshieldmaker , and wallpaperuse.com Stencils There was significant research and experimentation with different ways to physically produce the stencil. Maker spaces did not offer a work space large enough to produce the stencil at either of the final sizes (2 feet in diameter or 4 feet in diameter) and generally focused on laser cutting, which is a bad idea for most types of plastic. Ultimately I opted to produce it at home with my Cricut. Materials testing: this is not the right kind of plastic N OTE TO CRICUT USERS: 1mm plastic is too thick and acrylic thicker than a trans
Read more

Waterfall Cards

-
Image
I made two waterfall cards with very different visual flavors. Both are adaptations from one of these tutorials from Mixed Up Craft , but with different proportions so I needed a few prototypes to get all the math right. The first one was for a sakura-themed baby shower. Nearly everything on my friend's registry was already spoken for other than a gift card, so to give that a more personal presentation I made the waterfall card. Here's the final! If you want to see my trial and error, here's the process: The second one was the original goal, but harder to implement because of the dimensions of the cards. This is, however, the more clever card because it was given to a magician, and there's a classic card flourish called a waterfall. So this is a waterfall card made of a waterfall of cards! Final product (minus the outer shell): Prototype plus final:
Read more

Holiday Cards: Kokeshi

-
Image
My holiday cards for 2021 were inspired by Japanese kokeshi dolls , modified from the version I made for a pen pal earlier in the year. SO excited to finally have an excuse to use some of this gorgeous handmade Japanese paper! I'd had my eye on that green pattern since the first time I laid eyes on it. Bonus, I also found good holiday colors (for Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's) and a pattern appropriate for the Year of the Tiger. The process is pretty straightforward: sketch what the final should look like (or, in this case, lift from a previous project to modify) trace into vector shapes in design software, resize to fit into regular-postage envelope (black rectangle). The lines are instructions for the Cricut – the gold lines are to be drawn with a gold marker, the magenta lines are for cutting a slot for the obi (waist sash) to slide through, and the vertical cyan lines are score lines for folding. I make 50-60 cards every year, I want to make sure they're as consi
Read more