OUGD503/ COLLABORATION.
BEAR CEREAL.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.
Today I worked on the character/letter ideas we had, in which the children would be able to cut out the animal letter from the back of the box, place it on matching stand and keep it as a visual reference in their house, whether they wanted to collect the letters of their name or the full alphabet, for the range myself and Caitlin have decided to design the boxes for 4 different animals.
The first animal letter I started to work with was B for bear.
The process I started with was taking a capital B, (Helvetica bold) and editing the shape and features of the B, to also give it attributes of a bear.
Once I sketched the idea I scanned it into illustrator and began penning over the illustration.
I tried to create an expression on the bear that was realistic or authentic to a grizzly bear, however wasn't too scary for young children.
I then started trying to create a texture to make the bear look furthermore realistic, I could also further the design in the future, and help the children learn about animals more cognitively, as they are learning about the animals using more than one sense (sight and touch).
I continuted to apply the texture to the rest of the bear, however I found that it didn't take very well and failed to look particularly realistic, and so I searched for something that would be more appropriate.
I found that with the style of the illustration I had done, the textured patten was just too heavy and bold, and that it needed something more delicate that would support the rest of the illustration rather than distract from it. For this reason I used the same colour pallet, however I changed the shape of the texture to small vertical fine lines.
To take this further I decided to apply an illustrator texture to the body of the bear which I had given a gradient, the texture I applied was grain, with a sprinkled affect. This stopped the surface of the bear looking so perfect and gave it some roughness.
I then checked in with Caitlin and some other peers who suggested I could try a different expression on the bear, as the current one still might be too scary for young children, therefore I created a few different options.
Below I changed the shape of the muzzle and gave the bear smaller teeth, as well as adding lines under the eyes and over them which people often get when smiling.
Next I simply added whites into the eyes of the design above, however I felt that adding this detail combined with the lines above and below the lines made the eyes appear too agressive.
I took the original mouth shape with the large teeth and applied whites to the eyes to see if it appeared less wild, which it did, however it had now become slightly emotionless in the face.
I then took the bear with the new teeth and mouth shape and applied the lines above and below the eyes, as well as white highlights in the eyes. I felt that this was the most successful design so far. the new mouth shape gave a hint of smiling, however still seemed wild, and the eyes witheld an expression that supported the rest of the face.
I tried the exact same design with the old muzzle shape and found this worked just as well as the previous. I sent the final design I had come up with to Caitlin and we decided that the design below was most preferable of the two.
we took the above illustrations and any other ideas we had to the next class, it was here we decided that Caitlin would hand draw each of the letters and then I would recreate them digitally.
Below is the next illustration I began to work on after Caitlin had sent me the sketch she had done.
I flipped the sketch so it took on the frame of the letter J and traced over the illustration with the pen tool.
I changed a couple of characteristic of the drawing, such as the eyes to match those that I had already done for the bear.
I adjusted the facial features slightly to be more in tune with the previous bear character I had illustrated and digitalised. I then began to colour in the jellyfish, giving it colours that were most fitting (as jellies are usually clear). I decided to colour the fish in with a pale mint and pink colour, as these are the colours seen in jellyfish when catching the light, or the blue of the surrounding ocean. I textured the head of the jellyfish in illustrator, to cohere with the texture of the bear.
I then coloured in the tentacles of the jellyfish using deeper and more bold shades of the pale colours I had previously used for the head. I thought that adding gradients allowed the jellyfish to look more mystical and ethereal, as it does when it travels through the ocean.
Above are the two characters I have illustrated so far against a cream background (As on the box).
Next Caitlin sent me the character we had decided on for the letter 'C'. C for Chameleon.
Again I took the letter into illustrator and drew around it with the pen tool.
In order to achieve the chameleon above I split the character into five different sections. The body, the eye, the spine, the chin and the head fin. I applied heavy gradients of about 10 different colours to each of these five sections. Once I had done this, I applied the crystallise effect to each area individually, this created the texture in which the chameleon looks like it has a number of diamond shaped facets across its body. Not pleased with this as the final product, I wanted to edit the surface of the character to really draw upon the scaly skin of a reptile. In order to do this I applied the mosaic tile texture to each section, which broke the previous facets into smaller scales, which looked more true to a chameleons skin.
We then looked back at the characters and compared them to the current branding and decided that they were particularly coherent and could be improved. Caitlin suggested that we should eliminate the textures and use flat colour instead, as the brand already has this focus and style. Before I digitalised the final two letter characters I edited the current 3 to be more consistent with the brand.
I went back and edited the previous letters I had done removing any textures and turning the character letters into completely flat colour objects. These would then be more honest to the current branding.
The chameleon character took the most work as I was quite adventurous with different textures. However I managed to still imply the same ideas as previous (scaly skin etc) however using the new rule of flat colour only. As I had taken the textures away, I used darker, and lighter shades of my main colours to give the characters some depth.
I then moved onto the elephant illustration Caitlin had sent to me, and played around with shading, facial features and extra details, subtracting and adding until I found the best combination (pictured bottom)
We took these new flat character versions to the next crit and were told they were more in keeping with the brand style and personality, however they felt that we could improve the appearence of the chameleon to be easier for the children to identify. One of the first things children learn about chameleons on our cereal box, in in regular education, is that they have the ability to change the colour of their skin. This is what makes the chameleon stand out from other reptiles. However when it was shaded in a variety of greens, the illustration looked like it could be representative of one of these other many reptiles. Therefore we made a joint decision to change the colour of the chameleon to be more experimental and distinguishable.
I then passed this onto Caitlin, and she made a selection of the chameleons in different colours which could be placed onto different parts of the box.
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