Superflat Love, or the Mortal Plush Entry that Wasn’t
I thought I’d share a pic of the object that I didn’t submit to Mortal Plush. I call this piece “Superflat Love”. I started thinking about the emotion of “depression” and began trying things in my sketchbook. I liked the idea of a heart bursting out from the body of a figure. As I worked on it and talked about it with my sister, I realized that I wanted to do something more positive. I settled on the concept of love or infatuation as overwhelming, joyful but also painful.
I started playing with the idea of working up a two-dimensional sketch in a three-dimensional medium. My sister mentioned Yoshitomo Nara, an artist we’ve both admired for some time. 
I started to think about Nara, Murakami and Superflat. I was feeling challenged by portraying emotion but retaining a stereotypical amigurumi object. I wanted to see if I could bring the “true emotion” of the call for submissions to the kawaii aesthetic.
I took the expression for the face from San-x and Sanrio objects and packaging, as well as from ASCII emoticons, specifically X) (an emoticon denoting squinting eyes or benign pain/confusion). I wanted the yellow starburst to suggest comics and anime along with the popping heart. I added the black outline to play with the idea of 2d/3d space, again referencing comics/anime.
I decided not to submit the piece in the end because I’m not sure it’s entirely successful at conveying emotion in the way that the other submissions in the Mortal Plush Flickr pool do.
I’d love feedback/comments.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I like this entry also. You could have submitted two.
May 4th, 2009 at 10:24 am
@Shari – I felt like, in the unlikely event that both submissions were shown, they wouldn’t work together. I learned this morning that the deadline has been extended, so I’m planning on making another piece or two to show with the monkey. I’ll be posting about this soon.
Thank you for your comment!
May 5th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Wow! You are lucky to have such a helpful sister.
I like this design a lot – especially the black outline – but without knowing the artist’s inspiration / design references, it doesn’t have the same immedate, easily understandable visual impact that the pirate monkey has. I think you made the right choice!
May 5th, 2009 at 9:46 am
@YarnGal – I think you captured exactly what I was thinking. I felt like the immediacy of the emotion was the most important thing for the show. I’m hoping to finish another submission or two to go with the pirate monkey that also communicate in this way.
Thanks for your insight!