IB Art Project 1:

‘Plushification’

9/10/2017    Mingi Webber    Period 8

(All of the pictures are on my website I’m sending with this journal)

Extra pictures all the way on the bottom!

This is the first piece of my project that related to my theme, addictions. This piece shows off quite a strange addiction, plushification. Plushification is when someone traps themselves in an anthropomorphic (two legged) animal suit.

Originally, I was going to have someone deteriorating in one of these animal costume. I changed the idea to have a stuffed bear with a human eye, slowly decaying away. The issue with the costume was it felt too cliche. I wanted something different, so the bear with the human eye worked. So, I thought of this because you realize that the reason why they want to be stuck in a costume is because they are attached to their childhood. The person thinks they are the anthropomorphic animal because they have a desire to be it. Overtime, it slowly damages them. The bear has small amounts of stuffing falling out of it and overall, it’s a mess. They have a lock around their neck, showing that they are trapped, and can’t get out of this addiction. They can escape their addiction if they have the key, or in this case, help. The shadow hand that is there is the ‘help’. The bear doesn’t see this hand as help, in fact, they see it as quite the opposite. The hand is ‘evil’ and ‘sinful’ to them. This would overall help them, but they don’t want to let go of their addiction. Once they let go of their addiction, they will lose most of their childhood. It is good to let go of your childhood and not let it slowly eat away at you, destroying you overtime. Everyone will be uncomfortable seeing someone slowly break down from their childhood. Addictions aren’t meant to be pretty. They are messy and tend to be discomforting.

In fact, the medium I used is discomforting to many others. Digital art, something many others aren’t familiar with. It makes them uncomfortable using it and sometimes seeing it makes their stomach turn. In a way, I feel as if this project is somewhat directed to me, the creator. I still am very attached to my childhood. I still have many toys from my youth, and still wish to keep them because letting go of them isn’t easy. This project will let me and possibly others grow, teaching us it you need to let go of your childhood before it completely takes over you. Paint Tool SAI2 allowed me to create the sketchy lines, showing that addictions aren’t clean. They shouldn’t have clean beautiful coloring. It should be unclean, sketchy, a mess. I worked in the size of 1900 x 2232 pixels or 160.9 cm x 189 mm for normal measurement. A small brown plush bear is used, with red food dye and a key (to cut the bear open). It’s suppose to be hard to rip it open, to show it isn’t easy getting out of an addiction. The red food dye is suppose to show the more ‘human’ side of the bear because us humans bleed. A 5.5 x 4.5 inch paper was used and put into the bear. The small piece of paper says ‘thank you’ and the font that was used was Bad Script. Above the words the main image is printed on the paper in standard colored ink. The website that helped me host this journal is WordPress.

REFLECTION –

My presentation went well. During the gallery walk, people did not understand my project because it was just a bear with a key in it. So most people thought it was a last minute project until I had to go up to show my project off. I had a few people come up to cut the bear open with a key, which caught everyone off guard. No one knew what to say at first because it was such a strange request. Once they did cut the bear open, they were very surprised to see a bloody piece of paper inside of the bear. Many people were impressed with how I presented the project during the presentation, but during the gallery walk, it really didn’t seem like much. If I could improve on one thing, it would be setting up a better gallery walk. I do have to say I did very well with the presenting the project in front of everyone. I made everyone uncomfortable, shocked, or confused, which is what I wanted.