Ideation

This whole collection was based off a birthday present my friends gave me for my 17th birthday. It was one of those educational posters you get for young children, but they Bala-fied it and basically pasted unflattering photos of me onto the different animals and made terrible puns with them.

It’s the most memorable gift I’ve gotten to date, and I knew I’d definitely want to have one of the panels be about my friends. Hence, I decided to have each of the panels be different animal alter egos of myself.

Overall aesthetic

I went with a childrens book illustration sort of aesthetic, as I’m really a kid at heart. It’s hard for me to take myself seriously, and I like to surround myself with cute and happy things all the time – Artbox stationery being a prime example.

Cold is not my thing.

I’m really sensitive to cold – as a very tropical person, I get cold even when the aircon is turned on. I always, always have a spare jacket in my locker in case I forget mine in a rush. It’s so bad that I’d say I have roughly 20 different hoodies and jackets, cause it’s the item of clothing I can’t live without. Hence, these panels aim to express my sensitivity to cold, with me as a hippo because they’re very tropical animals, like myself.

I’m really, really escapist.

I’m really perfectionist, so I tend to do things really slowly, and like to take my time with them. Here in ADM though, there are a lot of deadlines one right after another, which barely gives me enough time to work with them for as long as I’d like to. The result? I give in to my escapist tendencies a lot more, because I’d rather procrastinate then face reality. I find myself watching shows and reading books, my guilty pleasures, a lot more than I used to – the more I get stressed, the more I want to skateboard away from Earth. I used a tortoise here to symbolize me being slow.

I’m a totally different person around my friends.

It might be hard to believe, but I’m actually a very introverted person. My idea of a perfect afternoon would be me sleeping, reading, or watching Netflix on my bed. However, my friends being my friends, would probably crash my house and get me to go outside, and the afternoon would morph into another type of perfect afternoon. They get my hard exterior to come off, and loosen up and enjoy life.

The three animal friends represent my three best friends. The Dinosaur would be Cynthia, a beautiful soul I’ve known since Sec 1. She’s a dinosaur cause she gets really angry on my behalf when I’m mad about things. She almost called up my ex and lectured him, haha.

The dog is Yilin, cause she’s the most loyal person I know. She’s helped me out with so many things that I’ve lost count.

The rabbit is Ashish, a friend I made fairly recently in Year 5 in Junior College, but has become one of the most important people in my life. He’s a rabbit because he’s super jumpy and excitable. He’s just overall a really lively person.

Watermelon and sleep – they’re like my right and left eye.

I wish I could express my love for watermelon without sounding like a psycho. I really, really like watermelon. I can eat a whole watermelon at one go. Sleeping on a stomach full of watermelon would literally put me on cloud 9, especially because I haven’t done either in a pretty long time, with the really busy term.