3D modelled character: Cereal Package Design

Lesson 2 - Generating Package Artwork

Package Layout guide

In this session we was introduced to the artwork production pipeline necessary for taking our package design through to print and physically construct. From this lesson we needed to bring the layouts created in the first lesson and also an idea of a colour palette. The outcome from this workshop will be print ready artwork for your cereal package design. 

The smug character I chose and illustrated on Illustrator. I chose this character because he had a funny expression and also had a cute 90's appeal like 'Pokemon' and 'Digimon'. I added in a realistic visual cereal in his bowl which effectively made the character contrast. My character is quirky, so it is unique and it simply reaches to equal gender and from children to young adults. 

Initially I choice a design thumbnail sketch I had produced for our previous lesson on generating layouts for our package. However it may have been altered a bit whilst designing on Illustrator, I tried many different layouts because I tend to like layout when it is visually designed as I do not think that I will ever possibly be able to choose something when it is just in phase one and not fully done. It is something I can not go through with it all the way to the end unless I have the finished piece.  On the other hand, I still managed to keep the idea of big bowl of cereal, character and heading in the composition planned. 

I used the pen and shapes such as the rectangle to copy an outline of the cereal package of image we was received from Jay.  I was happy with my heading "Crunches", made it spiky so it can reference teeth because our teeth makes the crunch grinding sound. From then I placed my scan imaged I had previously edited on photoshop to remove pencil smudges and such, onto the cereal outline front area.  I decided to keep some parts from the cereal package image like the package information detail to add a little bit more realist.  As you can see an image I found on google of a bowl of cereal and spoon has also been added, initially the plan was the illustrate the bowl but that was before I designed my character with realistic cereal sustenance. I thought it would look extremely out of place if the it does not match with my character and I did not like the thought of changing him. I once again used the pen tool the outline the bowl and spoon and selected both the outline and image to image mask the two. I did this for all the images I had used. 

I was really taken by the second design idea, the dark pink background and honey dripping really made the front more interesting than bland like the first design. I could say the only problem is the fact that dark pink may attract more women than men however whilst gathering some opinion many told me that the character can simply also attract boys. I do not know if I will change the colour of my cereal package as I am fund of it but it never hurts for me to try different colours because in the real world I would not be selling it to myself.