I love Rainbow Six: Siege. It has become one of my all-time favorite video games to play. The game is a non-stop adrenaline rush with a very competitive following. It's a game that has inspired me to learn more about the brave men and women that fight terrorism in every country around the world. I wanted to express my fandom for the game that paid tribute to the fun it has provided for me. The characters in the game (called operators) have unique outfits and backstories based on their country and culture. Each operator stands out from the rest of the characters with their own unique attributes. Nearly every operator is iconic in some way, so I decided to boil down a few operators' unique features into icon art.

I like to be creative, but I seem to get in the way of myself every time. You see, have the hands of a bumbling gorilla. My mind draws up beautiful pictures in my head, but that precious image gets lost in transit when it travels down my arms. Here is the result. It's okay to laugh... a lot.

In the beginning, I wanted to make cartoony versions of some of the operators. I tried to sketch various versions of a head. Then I started thinking that maybe I wanted to make them with a body as well. I drew up a few versions to see what I liked most. I didn't really like any of them. I couldn't figure out how to make cartoon characters while being a novice with Adobe Illustrator. Then it donned to me. LEGOS.

I liked the Lego idea, but didn't love it. It looked really amateur and pathetic. I would also have to put in even more work to customize each body. Back to the drawing board.

I needed a solution. Out of curiosity (and maybe a little frustration) I started deleting things. Then it happened... almost entirely by accident. Less is more. Allowing myself to focus on just the headgear of these operators made them more stylistic and more manageable for someone of my skill level.

Tweaks were made. Colors were brightened. Some parts became more detailed. Others became more simplified. I talked with a more experienced artist and he pointed me towards seeing the characters from multiple angles and in more of a raw, uninterpreted form. I realized I could view the character models in-game and work off of that. The end result is something that I'm proud of.

This project has become a love letter to Rainbow Six: Siege and its community. It's a game that I've become more and more passionate about over the years. My goal was to boil down the operators' most defining features and turn those into creative icons. While it took me a while to get there. I feel like I've done a fair job at doing just that.