Next Needs Up: "Demon(s)"

(Have I mentioned how much I love titles? Coming up with and giving them to things, namely? You should see the files in my computer. Sometimes [...] sits here trying to find my pictures so she can reminisce on something and she just gets frustrated at how little sense it all makes to her. Haha.)

Anyhow, here's the first design entry in the Next Needs Up series. (But be sure to stop by and read this post first, if you haven't already gotten acquainted with Next Needs Up's origin story.)

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Here, to the right, is the official (*cough*!) design document...

So, Ok, maybe it isn't so "official" looking. Or even very clean and thought out! (Excuse alert! Brace yourself...) But I'm not on a "team", so I've got little need to create accurate visualizations of what I have in mind for anyone else to follow. I've pretty much got what I want fully visualized in my head, so a quick, messy sketch like this one, with the only "corrections" or "revisions" being substituted by chicken-scratchy notes works perfectly.

If you took a second to read said notes (if you can read my handwriting...), then you should be getting an idea of what Next Needs Up's "essence" is. If I had to put it into as few words as possible, I would have to say that it is tension, discontent, confusion, and anxiety, overall. He's a character that I've always imagined would look shaky and jittery at all times, stopping to look over his shoulder every so often. It's possible that it was born from my arachnophobia. (Which, I should probably note, a friend mentioned that she doesn't believe that I'm scared of spiders very much anymore, after spending the last few years obsessed with them. She might be right.)

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And here is Next's  full body, simplified "icon" rendition, based on the above shown sketch. Not that it wasn't already a streamlined character, but these lines capture the basest essence perfectly, I feel. I am pretty happy with it as an icon for Next. I called this design "Demon"...at first. If you noticed, the title makes mention of there being a plurality of this "Demon".

Some artifacts, that come from my design process when working with vectors, created some questions in my mind, as to which "Demon" version I should choose to represent Next with. I will attempt to explain this as plainly as possible. Basically (you know you're in trouble when I start a sentence with that word), to make the negative spaces that form the eyes and the fanged frown, I used curves with no fills and strokes set to about 0.04 of an inch (Spreadshirt's minimum size for space between elements) in size. With them, I made the circles for the eyes and the lines for the frown and fangs on a layer on top of the solid shape that I had set down for the body. I then flattened the transparency to turn the strokes into outlines, then selected them and the body shape and merged them using the pathfinder window. (Found under "Window > Pathfinder", or by hitting "Shift + Ctrl + F9") The strokes were colored differently from that of the body shape, so when I merged their outlines on top, everything on the body shape that was underneath them was subtracted. And, since they were a different color from the body that they were merged to, all I had to do was select them on their own, with the "direct selection tool", delete them, and voilà!

Here's how the design looked by this point. The leftover circles in the eyes, and the triangular shapes in the fangs are the "artifacts" that I mentioned. Next, again with the direct selection tool (shortcut key "A" in Illustrator), I proceeded to select the circles in the eyes and deleted them. No qualms there, since the big, empty eyes communicate what I wanted the design to perfectly. But then, I selected the triangular shapes, deleted them, and stopped and thought, "Hm...does it look better with or without the triangular shapes filling that space?" So, I undid it and stared at it for a while. Then deleted them again. And undid. And deleted again. Finally, I copied it over to compare them side by side. Still undecided, I took a picture of them with my cellphone and sent it to several of my friends, in hopes the they would help me defeat my indecision. (One of them being Adlyn, of course. With her being Next Needs Up's "godmother" and all...) The verdict was mostly mixed, but one of the people who replied asked why I couldn't use both. Brilliant! Why couldn't I think of that?!

So I uploaded both, naming the one with negative space for eyes and fangs "Demon Alpha", and the one with shapes for fangs "Demon Beta". Not long after, I decided to also make one with shapes for both its eyes and fangs, and one with only shapes for eyes available, and renamed the whole bunch. Here they are, from left to right. Demon Alpha, Demon Beta, Demon Delta, and Demon Gamma. What a happy (but tense, confused, and anxious) family, huh?

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They're currently available as Flex prints as either singles, pairs, or trios, grouped by type, and arranged horizontally. (For example here's an example of a trio of Alphas.) That's all I have for this one. I'm not making any promises or predictions, but I'm going to try and crank out as many posts as possible so I can catch up to all of the designs which I've yet to cover. Feel free to swing by the shop if you want to sneak a peek at any of these. (Or purchase a t-shirt or accessory with the design on it to see it in its full glory.) Until the next time, y'all carry on, I'll be going to sleep!

J, out...