Ok, so for this exercise I might have skipped ahead a bit...
I actually noted this exercise while I was completing earlier sections. I really want to push myself outside of my comfort zone, and I have a huge fear of failure that I needed to challenge. The way that I thought I could do that is just to get things out in the wild and see if I can get a response.
There were a few things in my sketchbook over time that I thought might be interesting to turn into something I could sell. I have been following the reboot of the 80's series MacGuyver, and made some doodles in my sketchbook while watching the show. In the series the main character is a technical whizzkid, and often uses his colleague's mobile phones to jury-rig a solution. It made me think about mobile phone cases and if they might appeal to fans of the show.
Quite by chance a colleague of mine saw my work and mentioned that her daughter was a big fan of the show! She also loves the cellphone trickery in the show, so I had the idea to create the mobile phone for real! I offered to create an illustration that could be printed on a phone case, as the daughter's birthday was coming up in May.
I sketched out some possible ideas. I had the idea that if I could get it printed onto a transparent case, I might be able to create a realistic effect that made it look like MacGuyver had actually jury-rigged the phone! I got feedback from my colleague about some of the options, especially around the choice of wording.
One of the things I couldn't seem to get right was the circuit board, so I did some reference research and experimentation to get a feel for things I could/should put on my circuit board. This was really helpful to understand how they are laid out, and to think about how I could get the right effect without making the image too crowded and complicated.
I started to work on the illustration itself and used vectors to create the image, which allowed me to change the scale and orientation of components easily. While I was constructing it I used work-in-progress images in the mockup generator of a print-on-demand website. I noted that the image I was making didn't work with lots of different phones. Whilst I did know the phone of my colleague's daughter, I also wanted the image to be something I could put online for other people to buy phone cases.
I took the image in two directions, creating a light and dark version so people could choose the one that worked best with their phone. My colleague was thrilled and used the print-on-demand website to order the phone case for her daughter. She wanted to give me some money for the illustration. But, knowing about this exercise, I asked her if she could order me an extra phone case. They didn't cover my phone, but they did cover my wife's!
You can see the final result below. I am really happy with the case and I think it suitably creates the right effect. More importantly though, my colleague's daughter loves it!
However, I felt like I had 'cheated' a little on the exercise, so I decided to indulge myself in a little more experimentation. Ever since I had done Assignment 2, lots of people had mentioned that they really wanted the yellow wellington boots in the image. This got me thinking - if I could create a pattern, then it could be printed on loads of things - wellington boots included! I started by doing a small acrylic painting in my sketchbook. I scanned it in, then put the image in a mockup generator. I really like the fact it worked on something other than boots, but I noted that positioning of the elements needed planning to get the pattern to work in a seamless way.
I converted it into a digital version, thinking specifically about the placement of the images. The benefit to this approach is my ability to create repeatable symbols, and position them exactly to create a seamless pattern.
I pushed on with my current experimentation with texture, and I really like the effects. I tried to keep the lines rough and fluid, concentrating on having fun over being perfect. I think the results are successful, and the whole image seems balanced, even if the representations aren't life-like accurate. I then checked to see that the pattern would tile effectively, and was pleased to find that my techniques worked out. I then put the image onto more mockups to see how it would look. I particularly like the tote bag.
The one thing I noticed when putting the images on this blog and sharing over the web was there was a big difference in the colour reproduction from my software to the web and then to the mockups. Printing a rough sheet at home I suspected that the colour profile I had used wasn't correct.
This is definitely not my forte yet, so I looked on the print-on-demand website to get their advice on what colour profile was best to use. When I converted the file, all the colours went haywire, so I had to readjust everything. You can see the updated version above. I still think it works, the yellow seems more like wellington boots, but I am not sure if I should make it more saturated or not. My next step is to get the courage to create an online shop where people can buy things with the pattern on. The pattern itself was relatively quick and efficient to create, so I think I might experiment more with pattern design to populate my fledgling store!
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