GOYANGIE
A custom-made stress ball toy
Boz is a novelty zombie doll meant to evoke feelings of uncanny through his mirror-face and contorted limbs.
THE PROJECT
WHAT IS GOYANGIE?
Boz is a novelty toy doll meant for horror-loving fans. His mirror-face allows users to project themselves onto the doll to imagine themselves as a zombie. Boz's bendable body also lets user's distort his body for added creepiness.
The goal for this assignment was to create a toy that followed the theme of "uncanny", along with advertisements and packaging mock-ups to promote the toy.
WHY A CAT STRESS-BALL?
At the time, I had finished reading Freud's The Uncanny in another class, and drew inspiration from the text. In the piece, Freud discusses the ideas that the uncanny stems from our uncertainty of what is alive or not, and how the loss of our eyes can evoke uncanny feelings.
Thus, I aimed to create a doll that fit both of these points. Zombie's seemed suitable since they're the "living dead". As for the eye's, I was inspired by the button-eyes in the movie, Coraline.
HOW WAS IT MADE?
The design for Boz was made in Adobe Illustrator. After completing the design, I made stencils to cut out the shape of the doll, and sewed the individual pieces together. The toy was stuffed with wires and poly-fil stuffing, in addition to a 3-D printed bond-hand. The mirror and buttons were added last. All advertisement related parts of the project were also created on Adobe Illustrator.
USER RESEARCH
MAUDIE LOVES...
Cats
Purple
Stress-balls, putties, etc.
Comforting, cozy things
Stuffed animals
Based on my observations of her
DESIGN
This space is ideal for writing a detailed description of your business and the types of services that you provide. Talk about your team and your areas of expertise.
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This space is ideal for writing
GALLERY
This project was gifted to my roommate/very close friend of mine.
TAKEAWAYS
Patience.
Sewing and dealing with fabrics can be difficult because there is no ctrl+alt+Z to quickly undo a mistake. Since the all the work was done with my hands for this project and I was not completely accustomed to sewing, a lot of time was spent re-doing stitches to improve the look of pieces.
This project was also a humbling reminder to appreciate the effort it takes to create hand-made work.
TOOLS USED
FELT & STUFFING
This material was used to create the entire body of Boz.
SEWING (PRINTER & NEEDLE)
Goyangie was almost entirely hand-sewn. A sewing printer was used to create the mouth piece since it was more detailed and smaller.
CARDBOARD PAPER & PENCIL
Cardboard paper was used to create stencils for cutting out the felt pieces to create the toy.
YARN & CROCHET
The purple sack to hold Goyangie was hand crocheted.
ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR
The toy design was made in Adobe Illustrator.