Shark

After knowing that I want to now promote an underlying message through my work of 'togetherness' as an indirect response to the current situation the world is in. With the continuous negative news reports of more wars and descriptions throughout the world. 

I still want to continue using tattoo design and culture as my main inspiration for my own work, as it holds a lot of meaning behind some designs which I could push forward into my own. So I looked back on my research into Sailor Jerry to understand further the meanings behind some of his own designs, I wanted to find symbolic designs and representations which could relate to the word and meaning of 'togetherness'. From this quick look back on previous research I found that sharks represent courage and will which could be ideal to use of one of my characters for my campaign designs.

I want to keep my designs cartoon like, rather that hyper real life as I want to use the baby face bias to my advantage in the hopes of my design connecting with the consumer/viewer in a quicker fashion. I also want people to relate to the designs more, which the baby face bias theory suggests they will. 

I gathered some images of shark tattoo designs and also real pictures of great white sharks, I chose to base the design on a great white shark as I feel they are the most commonly known sharks to people thus the viewer will understand the design much quicker. 

All images for mood boards where sourced from google.

I then went about drawing some quick ideas up for the shark design first in my sketchbook then I moved onto illustrator to begin work on creating the digital design. 

After playing around with different styles and designs of the shark character I settled on the design below. 

The reason for the frame surrounding the shark relates back to the inspiration from the flash tattoo designs, as a lot of the flash tattoo designs feature a frame. I think the frame closes of the design nicely and makes it look more finished. I also decided to design the frame with the rope as rope is very symbolic of the sailor life and the ocean in general which obviously relates back to the shark, thus being appropriate to use in this design.

I also used the dotting technique previously used to help create shadow and add dimension to the overall design. I'm very pleased with how this design came out, it's very striking and easy to understand which is what I was aiming for.

Here I have added a little colour to the design, but just to the main focus of the design, being the shark. Even though I added slight shading with the colour I decided to keep the dotting work on the design as I feel it just adds even more depth and without the dotting I think the design would loose some of the impact the dots create.

I also added the banner below the design, which is another influence from the tattoo design. I think it works okay here but I don't think it is something I will continue, as I don't think it is as effective as another technique of promoting text could be. 

I also implemented this design onto a tshirt, just to understand what exactly the design would look like.

I used the displacement feature on photoshop so the design would interact with the tshirt folds in the hopes of making the implemented design look more realistic. 

The first photo is a photo I have taken myself the the photos below where images taken from google.

I think the design works quite well on the tshirt, as it is simple so it is still easy to understand once implemented onto the tshirt.