Icons

These icons came about after watching the Infinity Wars Marvel Movie. I enjoyed the music from the 1st Guardians of the Galaxy so much. I appreciated the futuristic setting with the musical throwback with old 70s songs. I too am a 70s music lover. So of course I had to do something with this appreciation. 

I wanted to create a simplistic set of icons representing the main characters as well as a few of the iconic items from the movie. I also wanted to create unity through shape. I feel happy about the result and look forward to the future Guardians movies. 

Sketches

Sketching began with the goal in mind of finding a style to create my icons. This was fun, however these sketches became harder as I tried to make completely different characters in my mind look unified through style. 

First Digital Draft

These first icons were essential in moving toward a more cohesive style. While struggling to create this unity, I tried to look up how other artists have simplified characters into icons. While researching I came across a fan art icon of Groot. This character gave the insight I need into moving forward with my icons. I also applied critique from fellow designers that the while sticking to a similar head shape does create unity, the head shape itself was all wrong. So I set out to create similar icons. 

"Cute"

I started drafting what I thought the characters would look like as adorable cartoon characters, and I found a style that I could recreate with each icon. Here you see the beginnings of my finished icons. I did not have the flow in design in my original icons as I did with my new forms. 

Finally the process of applying the rules I created to make this set cohesive. Each head begins with a circle. These circles are all stroked with a darker hue of the main color. Each head has eyes that are all the same with variation of size and added eyelashes for the women. What changed from my draft was the mouths, the gradients, and I added elements of the movie that are "iconic" including the Sony Walkman, headphones, a cassette tape, a Ravager symbol, and last but not least the Guardians spaceship.