I created a small sticker set for the Spring Solstice of my favorite insects. I am really proud of myself for sticking with this concept throughout the whole project and not starting something different. I spent more time researching stickers and thinking about my interests for picking these, which I think helped a lot with staying committed to the idea. The sticker set is composed of three stickers that follow a theme, and the theme I chose was winged insects, specifically a cicada, moth, and greta oto. 

I started with sketching out the insects to better understand how their body parts work and connect together. It helped me a lot with understanding their wings and how they function/look. It also helped me see details that make a very big difference with the feel of each insect, like being shiny, matte or furry and how to portray that. I tried sketching out the body parts of each insect to know how they look and how best to design them in a realistic way. 

I think took my ideas to Illustrator. This was a very rough draft for me and it was mostly to understand how I should go about drawing the insects in terms of layers. I used the blob tool for this entire draft, which did the job but I felt it was very messy. Initially, I was going to do just butterflies so they were all going to be in different positions and drawn for different angles, so I did the same with these. Although I felt this draft did the job, I didn't feel like these stickers were at the caliber that I hold myself to. So of course, I started over. 

After receiving some critique and assessing what I wanted out of these stickers, I decided on doing a different species of these insects and also doing a cicada instead of a dragonfly. I'm really glad that I changed my insects because as a set, I think the colors turned out great with all of the species I chose. Also, cicada's are some of my favorite insects and remind me of summer time at my grandparents home, so the sentimental value motivated me to stick through this concept. 

I am very happy with my stickers. The wings are symmetrical but details within the bodies of the insects are not. I used the pen tool for larger shapes, and the blob tool for shadows, small details, and the wings greta and cicada wings. The shadows are asymmetrical with the light source coming from the top right side of each sticker, making them consistent. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect the highlights so they were the right shade, and I'm happy with how they turned out. Each insect also has a shadow casted to the left of it's body onto the wing. 

Although each sticker is a different insect, I went about creating each one in the same way. Starting with the wings on one side and then flipping them for the other side. The general shapes of the bodies are also symmetrical, where I got the shape from one side and then flipped it to the other and combined them. Adding the details were all free hand through the blob tool. I chose red, green, and blue hues because they are my favorite color scheme and primary colors. Each insect also has a little bit of yellow. 

Overall, I am incredibly happy with my sticker set and how they turned out. I am excited to see how they look cut out. I decided to go with a thinner dye cut line because I don't want the white background to overwhelm the stickers. I did really enjoy this project and I'm proud of myself for sticking with my concept until the end.