Visual artist and illustrator Antonia ‘Ton’ Mak’s affection for drawing cute and flabby creatures started years ago, but it wasn’t until 2014 that she turned this passion into her full-time career.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in New Zealand and the UK, Mak created Flabjacks – a tribe of chubby and fluffy cartoon characters based on objects – shortly after she left an advertising job that brought her to Shanghai in the first place.
To get her brand and artwork out there, Mak started off by doing some charity exhibitions, which eventually led to commissioned projects and collaborations with real estate companies and creative brands to produce installations, decorations, ad campaigns and product or logo design – all featuring her signature characters.
Within the fluffy world of Flabjacks, Mak’s currently focusing on Puff Ville – a story based on dough-shaped characters from a natural dough habitat. “A lot of my drawings are based on seemingly dead objects like a sprout, pancake, baguette or broccoli. It’s related to the concept of animism, which is the study of different cultures’ rituals and traditions for worshipping objects and things,” the anthropology major explains.
With an online shop on Shopify since the start of Flabjacks, Mak started her own Weidian a few months ago, where greeting cards (RMB33), plush toys of Puff Ville characters Mo and Michi (RMB190), totebags (RMB150) and other goodies are now available to those living in Chinese mainland
Mak also teases that she’s now exploring other mediums to present her work, and is working on an illustrated storybook, figurines and new installation concepts. 2017 will surely be a very flabby year.
www.flabjacks.com, WeChat ID: flabjacks
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