Octopi Family Icon Set
The Start-Up
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can push myself and develop new skills. Specifically, I’ve been wanting to hone in on my art style. Creating a set of 12 icons, gave me this opportunity. Knowing that my objective was to hone in on my style, I thought about developing more artist and office supplies. I had previously digitally drawn some and I thought I could easily add more to the set.
As I started my sketches of various items I could create for the icons, I had another thought come to mind. I love octopi and I was feeling inspired by my collection. I asked myself “What if Inky was having a tea party? What would that look like?” or “What if Coral decided to dress up? Would she wear Tahitian black pearls?”. This led me to a new bunch of sketches!
I was happy to go either way with my icons, and after asking some friends and a mentor, I decided to develop the octopi icons. I set myself a specific objective with these icons. I wanted the set to be fun and easy for a kid to understand the action being performed by the members of the octopus family I was going to digitize.
Going Digital
I started digitizing my icons with the help of my sketches. I made slow progress at first but became faster as I went. For some, I tried out variations of objects or colour. I also established my colour scheme. Some of my progress is shown below.
Some feedback I received was to lighten up the grey I had chosen for Inky. I had done several variations of different tones of grey and although Inky is a charcoal colour, I went with a slightly lighter tone, so that detail could still be noticed. It was also pointed out to me to watch out for tangents. They are not always avoidable in a design however there is still the possibility to move things around to try. Some other feedback I found really helped the overall design of each icon was creating a thick contour line. There were many other tweaks I did to help better communicate what items were, such as the laptop mouse and take out container.
Finishing
After working on these for two weeks, I felt satisfied that the icons I have created have met my objectives. I asked a 12-year old and a 14-year old to name them all and they got them spot on! This helped me know that I had met my objective of creating fun, recognizable action icons. I also developed new skills, acquired new knowledge, and I have a style that I am extremely happy with.
