Research and Development
After a brief discussion with the other members of my group about the theme or direction we could take the redesign - in which we settled on a magical, mystical and more picture book feel. As a result I looked at some children's book illustrators to start as a base.
When it came to drawing up some ideas for the appearance of the hare and tortoise i hit a major roadblock. We decided after reviewing my sketches that we wanted to have a more realistic appearance to the animals - which is outside of my comfort zone, specially since we wanted to head in a surrealist direction. On the first two worksheets i couldn't come up with any ideas that I particularly liked, and i feel as if these were a slight wast of time. I needed to work in a completely different way and find new inspiration.
As the finished design is stitch/fabric based I thought I should include buttons on them. So i could have correctly themed buttons i decided to make them myself out of oven bake clay. Afterwards I painted them white for a base coat then added colour. I don't think i would do this again as it was fiddly work and some of the holes I made so they could be threaded ended up smaller than intended meaning I cant sew them in place.
After talking with my family for a new perspective I was able to come up with an idea that I thought was innovative and interesting. This idea was based on the sun and the moon along with biblically accurate angels. Unfortunately, when I got back to the group with my idea we realised it didn't fit the theme we were going for so I had to drop most of the idea. However, I was able to fit the sun/moon part into my final design.
I knew I wanted the counters to be made of fabric, or at least have that appearance so I experimented with how I could go about it. Though the use of back stitching is delicate and looks effective, I believe I will go for applique.
After the many Worksheets I finalised a design I though fit with the theme, which was a teddy bear look. Along with that I was able to fit in the sun and moon idea with the characters being half and hlf, one side more natural the other sun/moon.
To create the half and half look I painted calico with acrylic to get the desired result. Unfortunately, these counters were to small for the buttons I made, so I could only use the ones I made for the stand. Despite the result being effective I am unsure as to how this could be produced on a commercial scale as well as sustainably.
One of the notes we had from Gibsons was that we needed a board. As a result a put together an extremely quick mock-up of a board - despite the fact that i forgot that my group had already made one digitally. Because of this, my group has decide to leave it out in favor of the one they made. The two tone greens are meant to represent night and day and would`ve had more details had I the time. One thing I only caught after I had made it was that there was no start or finish, essential parts to the game so this acts as more of an idea than a finished product.
However, because it is physical you can get more of a feel for the game than you can digitally.
