My current project, “‘Till the Badgers Come Home” revolves around the endangered North American Badger. The badger is having its home converted into farmland, forcing them out of their habitat and putting them into the endangered category. I wanted to make my project reflect this, and so I decided I wanted to make imagery of badgers in farmers garb. The title itself is a commentary on how farmers are taking the badger's land, a play on words of the country saying “‘till the cows come home”. If I were to make a clothing line based on this project I would create a set of overalls with a repeating badger design, and a non-directionally patterned bandana. I would make these garments because they are often worn by farmers, and I wanted to keep every aspect of this project on theme. This line would be geared towards queer members of generation Z, and would be made for spring and fall wear.

I didn't want my patterns to only include a singular badger, and so I sourced many different badgers for this project. I mainly focused on getting the correct pose from the badgers rather than selecting images of the American Badger specifically, adding the American Badger fur pattern to the badger drawings afterwards. 

The badgers are all drawn using primarily the pencil tool in Adobe Illustrator, only using the pen tool for instances of straight/inorganic lines. When attempting to use the pen tool for organic shapes I had found that it made the badgers look too pointy and inorganic, which contradicted the feeling I was trying to achieve with my patterns. I used medium lines for the majority of detail and outlining in all the badgers, however I had to make an exception to this line preference with the gunslinging badger, as the thick lines caused much detail to be lost on the belt strap and smaller gun parts.

I ran into many problems with the original colour pallet chosen in my mood board; there was not a wide enough range of browns, this caused a limitation in how much detail would come through on the badgers accessories, thus I had to add in a bit more variety in the browns included in my final colour pallet. The original dark brown used for the badger paws and face was far too dark, and it made it near impossible to see the eyes and nose on the badgers face, I ended up slightly lightening the brown so that the face details may be more visible. From my original pallet I was able to salvage the badger grey, the nail colour, the eyes and the red for the bandana. Unfortunately, most colours from my original pallet ended up not working, and I either had to lighten or darken them depending on the use. I also ended up scrapping the lawn chair badger from all patterns, this will be expanded upon in a later paragraph.

When deciding on my pattern layout I struggled for a while to find one that I really liked. My first attempt included 3 badger designs, however I felt as though it all scaled weirdly together and had too much going on. In my next designs I cut out the lawn chair badger due to it not matching my theme as well as the other two. I also shortly experimented with a layout that included a flannel print, but in the end it appeared too boxy, ad so I kept to the stripped pattern. On the stripped pattern I scaled up the pitchfork badger and made the pitchfork itself larger, putting the badger onto a tilted angle. I kept the alcoholic badger a bit smaller and on a horizontal axis. This simple stripped and tilted badger pattern is the pattern that I ended up liking the most, and so it continued onto the colour exploration stage. 

During my colour exploration I knew I wanted to use blue, however I struggled to find the secondary colour for my background. I tried a few different greens and yellows, but they didn't feel right. I tried a deep red, and it was closer to what I wanted. However in the end I settled on the blue and orange background, adjusting the colour of the beer bottle on the alcoholic badger to a red from a brown as to avoid it blending in too much with the background.

My final pattern consists of the pitch fork badger and the gunslinging badger. Most colours included in my pattern are either pulled directly from - or modified versions of the original colour pallet. I am overall satisfied with the pattern, however I feel as though it is still missing something. I would love to be able to create a long sleeved button up shirt with this pattern, and possibly a matching bandana with the non-directional design (pictured later). My additional colour pallet is a double complimentary pallet consisting of blue-orange, green-pink. I choose this for my additional colour pallet because I knew I would need plenty of colours in order to fully cover all the accessories and details on my badgers, and the double complimentary pallet allowed for a large range of colour usage. I used green and pink primarily because it is one of my favorite colour combinations, as well as pink and blue, which is why I used the blue-orange complimentary colours as well. 

When creating my non-directional design I first created a base pattern (pictured first). I really liked my first pattern and felt it did not need editing, thus I immediately moved it into phase two of creation and began experimenting with different optical illusions. I immediately did not like my vibrating boundaries design (pictured top row to the right) and I did not like the simultaneous contrast design (pictured bottom right). I did not like these optical illusions due to the need to change my original colours for them to work, I felt they looked odd. However I did enjoy the optical mix illusion and the Bezold effect, in the end I decided to drop the optical mix design due to it feeling somewhat techno, which was in contrast to the theme I was trying to portray.

My final non-directional design includes usage of the Bezold effect, as it was my favorite of the optical illusions experimented with. I had felt that the pattern was missing something, and so I took the head from the pitchfork badger and plastered it into the middle of my pattern, and it ended up tying the entire thing together. I wanted the head to also include the Bezold effect, however I didn't know how to apply it due to there only being one center head. I decided to use a mix of black and white outlining on the head, and though it does not have a counter part I still feel as though the illusion is able to work in some places on the head. I really like this final pattern, and hope to be able to create a matching shirt and bandana from my two pattens one day.

When planning on making my patterns, I did research on the American Badger. The American Badger is an endangered species, this is due to its lands being taken and used for farmland. I considered this heavily when creating my patterns, referencing its cause of endangerment by accessorizing the badgers with stereotypically “country” items, or otherwise including farming equipment in the patterns.

The repeat design I created is intended for use in items such as overalls and long sleeve button-up collared shirts. The garments would be intended for spring and fall lines, as these pieces of clothing are typically not too warm or cold they would be suitable for such medium weather. The reason that I picked overalls or a shirt is because both of these items are stereotypically common country attire and I believe these clothing articles would work well to portray my theme. garments The radial design is intended for use as an accessory piece, I would use it to create a bandana that compliments the shirt and/or overalls. 

When creating my patterns I had tried out a few different pattern formats, colours and badger placements. Originally having 3 badger designs for my repeat pattern, I cut it down to 2 as I found that 3 badgers crowded the pattern. I also had wanted to try out a flannel print rather than the stripes I landed on, however the flannel pattern ended up appearing too crowded or it caused my motif(s) to be too boxed in. I tried many different colour pallets until I ultimately decided on the muted orange and blue stripes for my final design. My non-directional design was a lot more straightforward, I created a few more motifs for it and quickly found a layout I wanted, using colours previously used in my repeat pattern. I ended up only experimenting with the illusionary effect on my non-directional design, ending up with the Bezold Effect being my favourite.

In this project I think if I had to further expand it, I would like to try out a few different pattern layouts and colour pallets. I am very content with my various badger motifs, and don't think that I need to expand on them further, however I cannot help but feel as though my patterns are missing something. Specifically I would like to find a way to make the flannel pattern work, as it is more often associated with farmers and country. In the end though, I believe my patterns turned out well, and though I may feel they are missing something I am overall happy with my work.

Mood Board Sources

Storyboard Sources