The Inflatable Project: Catbug Roma Menon
Symbol This symbol represents my cultural and social upbringing. The two swirls represent two different cultures. The smaller swirl represents my Indian upbringing, the culture that I accquired from living there for one portion of my younger years. The larger swirl represents my Singaporean upbringing and cultural values as I spent the later half of my upbrining there.
Catbug Besides being one of my favourite characters I wanted to use Catbug for this project because in a way he represents my symbol – in a cartoon form. Catbug is half cat and half lady bug, which represents me through his dual animal parts. Since half of my upbringing and cultural values come from India and the other half from Singapore, Catbug represents what I am in a more visual form.
Idea For this project I want to combine my symbol and catbug. As illustrated, I decided to use the black spots on his back to create the shape of my symbol.
Pattern I decided to follow a plush pattern I found on deviantart in order to construct my inflatable.
Mini Model Using painter’s drop cloth and staples I created a mini version in order to see how it works out. From this I learnt that stapling is hard and it would be better if I heat fused the plastic instead.
Construction After printing an enlarged pattern I traced it onto painters drop cloth with a seam allowance of half an inch.
Construction After tracing all the pieces onto painter’s drop cloth I then re-traced the same patterns onto blue and red plastic tablecloth in order to give the inflatable some colour.
Construction I then heat fused the coloured plastic tablecloth to the respective pieces and then heat fused the black dots in the shape of my symbol. Finally I heat fused the inflatable up, making sure that there were no holes.
Construction I blew the inflatable up, I am quite happy with how it came out. Although I will have to create a tube for the wind blower so that the pattern is more easily seen. I also need to add the final touches like the eyes and mouth.
Final Product This is how it came out, I am quite pleased with it. I wish it was bigger but I think it represents my symbol and idea well.
Derek Haffar Space and Materiality: Culture