Digital Stickers – From 2D artwork to creative communication
Yuichiro Ono (left), Character Designer and Creator of Business Fish. He created many other characters including Masked Wrestler Q, Moai-kun, Mr. Egg, etc. That Achieved 698 million sticker downloads worldwide. His unique artstyle has become popular among Western and South East Asian users on Social Media.
Every day, social media develops new ways to connect people in their daily lives. One of the latest trends is “Digital Stickers”.
Usually, a sticker is a type of self-adhesive printed paper, plastic, vinyl or other material. They can be used for decoration or for functional purposes, depending on the situation. Now, this concept has changed, using modern technology. Digital stickers are now being used to convey expressions or emotions to the person with whom we are communicating.
Shinto Okukawa, the managing director of Quan International, has come all the way from Japan to exhibit artworks at the Pallete Artspace, Thonglor called ‘Exposition of Internet Art Exhibition’. The purpose of the exhibition is to show the top 7 downloaded characters from their collection in Thailand and to enable the artists meet their fans.
The most popular characters on exhibition include:
• Business Fish: A man with a fishy head who always finds a way to avoid working.
• Usagyuuun: A White Rabbit who likes to do all those weird moves just to make other people laugh!
• Betakkuma: The mysterious White Bear with the human body.
• Mimi & Neko: A Friendly duo of a cat and a rabbit with a cuddly tail and cute cheeks.
• Sugar Cubs: The bears that were born to be loved by others.
•Piyomaru: A carefree chick who likes to stroll around.
• Elissy: A girl and her picture book.
The exhibitor chooses to use the word ‘Exposition’, which means ‘exhibiting, revealing, expressing ideas, and presenting the essence of the idea’. The main reason for the exhibition is to display the characters as large digital artworks to the public.
Shinto revealed that “If we going to do something related to the arts, it’s going to make our piece of work much more valuable than just a digital sticker.”
“Artists spend so much time and so much creativity in creating one thing in social media, but people can consume that piece of art in just 5 or 10 seconds, but we spend much more time than that. So, why don’t we do something to add value to the artists’ work”, he added.
There have been exhibitions in other countries, such as Japan and Korea, but the biggest is now happening in Thailand, from February 8th to March 8th, 2020 at the Pallete Artspace, Thonglor, Bangkok. Fans can visit the exhibition to get autographs from their favorite artists and the exhibition includes activities on weekends such as workshops, live painting performances and a lot of other entertaining events.
