The Goal
Our goal was to create and decorate mythical animal-styled piñatas to present at the Illuminate Festival. The Illuminate Festival represented our movement to the vertical tutor groups and out of being part of the Transition program. In partners, we designed, made, and paraded our finished product on the stage and throughout the different types of art. This presentation joins in with the other Project X classes to create a whole showcase for the parents.
Our Inspiration/Process
We took inspiration from a well known piñata artist called Roberto Benavidez. He’s created a ton of intricate designs with tiny pieces of different shaped papers in a range of colours. His designs differ from the traditional Spanish piñata which are normally spiky and circular and instead does paper mache warped animal-like creatures. We used the techniques of layering small pieces of paper to create a scale/feather like pattern but used a cardboard base instead of doing paper mache.
We created our hybrids by going online and combining different body parts of animals together. We made combinations with snakes and ducks, seahorses and birds, fish and birds and more. In partners, we decided which sketch we’d do for our design, mapped out what colours we’d use, and started making it.
- Sketch different designs individually for hybrids
- Gather in partners and decide which design you’d do or combine some parts of each together
- Re-size the designs for laser cutting
- Sticky tape a roll of of thinner cardboard in between the two sides of the designs to create the walls and middle sections
- Cover the structure in Gesso to cover up the sticky tape and smoothen out the surface
- Start cutting out small shapes from the coloured paper and gluing them onto the two main sides
- After covering both sides in the paper, paint the middle section to cover the white Gesso
- Hot glue the pompom string and lights to the sides of the piñata
- DONE!
More Inspiration:
Collaboration
In this project, collaboration and working well with our partners was vital to getting the project done in time. I was partnered with Aidan. Being able to communicate our thoughts helped well with compromising in deciding what colours schemes we would choose and who’s design we would use. In the end, we used his design, a Snuck which was a combination between a snake and a duck. Throughout the process, I think we successfully split the work so one person was doing something while the other was doing another. Even though we weren’t friends, I think we worked really well together because neither of us argued a lot and we were both happy to compromise with a lot of things.
Illuminate Festival
In the Illuminate Festival, we acted as the ‘guardians’ of the parents and used our piñatas which were attached to poles to guide them to the different art exhibitions. We were the first presentation and we went up in partners onto the stage where different lights were projected onto our piñatas to make them shine to their full potential. I think for only practising a few times beforehand, we did pretty well and our work looked amazing in the different lightings. The only bad thing about being the guides were that we couldn’t watch the drama performances since we had to stand outside with our art. Overall, the festival was fun and a great way to show everyone’s work over the past few terms to the parents, staff, and students.
