Art toys,Research and own creation
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Bachelor's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Author
Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Muotoilu
Mcode
Degree programme
Taiteiden ja suunnittelun kandidaattiohjelma
Language
en
Pages
60
Series
Abstract
As I was discussing about writing Art toy as the topic of my thesis, many asked me, toys are toys, what is an art toy? Can toys be defined as art? I was taken aback by the question without an answer. I answered awkwardly that it could be a combination of art and toys. Later I thought carefully about whether it was because the question was simply too complicated, just like someone asked, "What is an art". With the rise of modern art, it has also become very popular with the public for decades. Art not only focuses on beauty, but also pays more attention to the transmission of ideas and concepts. As a new and global platform, contemporary art is also focusing on what are the new possibilities? What is more than art, what can it be? As a result, people continue to create new possibilities for art, and the controversy of the term art is expanding and becoming more and more complicated. However, if we can pay close attention to the various aspects of this era in its depths, it is not difficult to find that, not only the word art has been repeatedly debated, but the meaning of things has also begun to be questioned and even redefined. When talking about toys, the first thing that comes to mind is something that children play in their hands, and they don’t mind even if they drop and break them. This is mainly because toys are usually mass-produced and cheap. When children grow up, they may start collect figures and models of superheroes and characters because of movies and anime. Although there are also people who collect antique toys specifically as collection or flipping. But it seems that toy is not taken as seriously as art in everyone's mind, they remain as the things that belongs to children. Before I started writing this paper, as a lover of Art toys, I had my own thoughts on Art toys at first. I wanted to take the opportunity of this paper to verify it, but after research, I found that these people had a lot of opinions on creating Art toys, which opened up my horizons. I am a beneficiary of the hard work from these people, and I am grateful. The beginning of the minority culture is always controversial, and it is their unremitting efforts and persistence that allow this field to continue to be passed on. This kind of inclusiveness, diversity and freedom may be the interesting part of art toys, it frees us from any strict definition for art toys. This thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is to clarify the development history of Hong Kong Art toy the history of art toys. Such as when it was created, what fused the idea, the explosion of the concepts, and the development of art toys. The art toys that emerged in the early 2000s, after several years of development, slowly cooled down in the middle of the 2000s, and the designers almost disappeared from people's view. In recent years, a group of new designers have tried to reopen up the art toy field. According to the interest I have about art toy and the knowledge that I have accumulated from read about them for many years, with the comparison and summary from various documents, I put the evolution of art toy into five different stages: the gestation period ( approx.1996-1999), the flourishing period (approx. 1999-2004), the silent period (approx. 2004-2007), and the authorized product period (approx. 2007-2014) ), the re-start period (approx. 2014-2020). Hopefully, we can see the different development stages and history of Art toy more clearly, and why it emerged The second part is to analysis successful designers, classic Brand and toy store. From the beginning of 2000 to present, designers share their creative process over the years, from questioning whether their work can express themselves, to then creating their own toys by hand; brands and toy stores discuss art toys from an industry and production perspective. How the trend can be achieved. They all witnessed the birth of Hong Kong’s art toy industry and participated in it. These are also important information for us to understand the development of this industry. I chose these six different cases. Apart from my personal preference, I also think that they all represent the category of each art toy, and they have also made a great contribution to the development of art toy. The third part is my personal designs. My original intention was to create a Finnish Art toy with a Finnish personality. So I designed PokerFace. PokerFace is an ordinary Finnish man. He has a restrained and shy personality. He doesn't like to speak out in the crowd and wants to have a little private space of his own in the busy and crowded day to day life. There is also an immortal childlike heart hidden under the mature and gorgeous appearance. I hope that by designing these art toys about Finland, Finnish people can also have a more intuitive understanding of the art toy culture.Description
Supervisor
lautenbacher, nathalieThesis advisor
lautenbacher, nathalieKeywords
art toy, designer toy, vinyl toy, Hong Kong urban vinyl, Michael Lau, action figure
