Based on my apps setting being in a a girls room and how it has the feature of being able to change up the style of that room, I had to work on a bedroom background illustration for the home screen.
Finding Inspiration
Design a. detailed background like this would be something new to me so I to do some research and find some inspiration to get started
I put together a background illustration Pinterest board, as well as for other items I needed in the room but wasn’t quite sure how to go about illustrating.
This was a really quick and easy was for me to find inspiration and really got my creative thinking hat on when compiling it.
Comics
I also looked at the background work of some if the comics and manga I have on my shelf.
Here’s an examples from the Unbelievable Gwenpool (one of my favourites. If I were to include all the ones I looked at we’d be here all day)…
This was really good because the background are actually meant to be in the background of what’s going on. It showed me how to not over do it and distract from the focus essentially. I also found that artists often use background art to subtly highlight aspects of a character’s personality if it’s their home or workspace. Like with these above pages I took outta Chris Hasting’s Unbelievable Gwenpool, you can clearly see she’s a huge nerd, kinda messy (not unlike myself ) and she’s also gone completely reckless once entering the universe of all the comics she’s read back in her home universe.
Toca Boca World
I think stylistically the popular touch screen game Toca Boca World is most in line with what I’m envisioning so I made a Pinterest board of examples of ways players styled their rooms.
Mattel Flash Games
I also looked back to them Mattel flash games from the 00’s that I referenced in a previous post. These are another big inspiration for the style I’m going for.
Ikea
Then since I’m illustrating furniture I obviously had to go to the Ikea site to see what furniture looks like.
Some Planning
Because I had some extra elements coloured in on the periodic table of progress, for continuity’s sake I had to figure out how to incorporate them in the background.
At one point I realised that some of these items would make way more sense being in a kitchen or bathroom so I think that the app should have arrows on either side when decorating that takes you to those rooms. Then I think kids should have the ability to set the background on home to one of the three.This also takes some work of my shoulders as I don’t need to illustrate all these for the bedroom background.
Sketches
Here are some sketches I did trying to figure out a layout…
Here is me trying to pick a a wallpaper…
Then the rest is just me trying to figure out what way to draw specific elements…
Digitisation
Once I was feeling confident enough in my development work, I took to illustrator. My approach was to start with base being the floor and wallpaper. Then I illustrated the different parts like window, bed, desk and wardrobe individually, adding them in as I went.
I decided to use a lighter outline on everything but the unpacked items so that they stand out and I think it works well. Overall I think I did a pretty good job here.
Other Backgrounds
For the simpler backgrounds on other screens I referred to my patterns Pinterest board for inspiration.
