Design Christmas Collections in Procreate and Photoshop

1. Welcome to Class!: [MUSIC] Christmas. It's the biggest holiday of the year and the category in which most artwork is purchased. Companies are constantly looking for fresh Christmas designs to put on their products and are purchasing all year long. Anything from cards, wrapping paper, pillows, ornaments, wall decor, you name it. If you're getting into art licensing and would like to see your art on products in store, it is a great idea to include Christmas designs in your portfolio. It is always that time of year for designing for Christmas. In this class, we will get into the holiday spirit by designing a mini Christmas collection in Procreate together, one placement illustration and two complementary patterns. I will share how to break down the Christmas theme and the many ways of interpreting this occasion, as well as my process as I gather inspiration, how I plan out a mini collection and get the most out of my ideas. Thus my drawing process in Procreate and finishing everything off in Photoshop. By the end of this class, you will have the tools and inspiration to design a mini Christmas collection of your own. The best part of this class is that you can easily take what you learn and apply to other occasions in the future as well to create incredible birthday, Easter, Valentine's day, or everyday collections to add to your portfolio too. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another class from me, Kristina Hultkrantz. I'm an illustrator and surface designer from Mariefred in Sweden. I've been a full-time illustrator since 2010, but I've only in the last few years have I been focusing on adding art licensing collections to my portfolio. In that shortish time, I've had the pleasure of working with incredible companies like Hobby Lobby, Orange Circle Studio, Stupell, American Greetings, and Joann's, because I like to work on trend forward commercial collections. My Christmas designs have landed on products, such as cards, mugs, rugs, and even pillows. I can't wait to get all holly jolly with you in this class. Let's get started. 2. Class Project and Supplies: [MUSIC] For the class project, we will be designing a mini collection together, including a one placement illustration and two complimentary patterns to go with it. This sort collection is a great starting off point and something that is incredible to add to your portfolio, because you don't necessarily have to think about a certain market when you are designing this collection. If you are curious about the different markets that are a part of art licensing, I have also included a reference PDF in the project resources section that you can download and check out. It has all the different markets such as fabric, etc, that your products could land on. There are so many different products that Christmas designs can go on, so it's not really your job to figure out what that is. That's the company that you're pitching to. By creating general collections that include illustrations and patterns, you're opening up your work to be able to be on all kinds of different products, which is really good. I'd also like to mention now that Christmas designs are always sought after. There's no specific time of year that you should be sending them off. Every company is different and they have different schedules. But I would say that in my experience, companies are looking for great Christmas designs all year long and there's no specific time. Feel free to pitch your Christmas designs anytime of year. The supplies that I will be using in this class are Procreate on the iPad Pro with Apple pencil and then I'll be finishing my artwork off in Photoshop because that's my favorite process. You can of course follow along the class with your favorite materials and software. Now that we know that let's get into the class. 3. Christmas Themes: Where to Start: [MUSIC] When you're setting off to start designing a new collection, I know that that is the hardest part because how do you know where to start? I don't want to just say, create a Christmas collection, just start. I know how difficult it is as a beginner to know what you should be designing, and what's popular, or what are the possibilities, or what are companies buying, and I want to just mention [inaudible] that there's all kinds of styles, there's so many possibilities with just the Christmas occasion of ways that you can interpret that, and I'm so excited to share that with you, but you can, of course, like I said in the intro, apply any of these to different occasions as well. Let's jump into the computer. I'm going to go through all the general Christmas themes plus the extended themes so you have as much inspiration as I can possibly give you to create your very own collection. Time to talk about Christmas themes. What make up the top Christmas themes, and where can we start? Let's go through the top ones. We have traditional Christmas, and this is all the things that we mainly think of, like the red and green colors, white of course, trees, ornament, gifts, everything like that, plus traditional characters such as Santa's, elves and winter animals such as polar bears, penguins, deer, plus snow men. These are all the traditional things around Christmas that you can choose to design around. These themes are endless and you can add onto these themes, as I will talk to you later. But to give you an example of some Christmas inspiration, I have a general Christmas Pinterest board that I'll be sharing with you in the class description. I'll leave links to my Pinterest board. Here's with lots of inspiration that I find very nice. But for traditional Christmas, it's a great thing to look at decor. You can get a lot of ideas rather than looking at somebody else's artwork, that looking at Christmas decor. Here I just wrote in traditional Christmas. You can get all the garlands, and mantle pieces, and different stockings, and Christmas tree designs, and things like that, to add into your designs. Here's an excellent example of traditional Christmas with the red ribbons, and reeds, and garlands, and stockings, and presents, and all of those things. We also have spiritual and religious Christmas. This is a Christian holiday, so if you celebrate in that way, you could consider having nativity scenes, angel Bible verses in your artwork, you could do a specific collection that involves those things to make it a very incredibly traditional Christmas. Again, looking at Pinterest, we can see tons of different inspirational photos for nativity scenes that are done in different styles and different wordings of just peace and joy, or the three wise men, I'd say the pallet is also, the red and green is really popular, but also blue and white, and silver are beautiful colors to add to those kind of designs. Another popular Christmas theme is to do trendy Christmas things, because Christmas has been done so many times, and the whole Christmas trees, and ornaments, and gifts, patterns, and illustrations have been done so many times. Companies are looking for fresh new things, and trends are something that are fun to try if you enjoy doing trends. Some of them can be quite silly, but if that's your style, then go for it. Here's some examples such as Unicorn Christmas, Lama Christmas, Plant lady Christmas. Just think about what's trending now and make it Christmas. Here are some examples of Unicorn Christmas to give you some ideas, it can be completely other colors than the traditional red and green, and just go all out with the glitter, and the unicorns, and the rainbows, but somehow bring in Christmas vibes as well by having packages, or unicorns with Santa hat. Here, there's lots of unicorn horns with point setters, and Holly, and other Christmas florals that would be a good idea as well. Another theme for Christmas that does really well is humor. That is Santa's or other winter characters during winter sports, or yoga, or funny Christmas sayings, also depicting non-typical winter animals doing Christmas things such as flamingo, zebras, unicorns. Adding humor into your work is also another way of adding fresh new designs to your portfolio that companies are always looking for. They're always looking for Santa's doing funny things like Santa's doing winter sports, or Santa's falling down on their skis, or things like that. You can have a lot of fun with this category and create lots of different designs that have to do with Christmas. You could almost make anything Christmas just by putting Santa hats on something. I wanted to showcase one of the girls at my agency at Pink Light, Arrolynn, and she's really good at creating humorous characters. I can quickly show you a couple of examples from her portfolio. Here she created gnomes for the holidays, print with a gnome or Santa, and it's funny text. Here we have another example of her work with funny winter animals doing different activities. Here's a mouse with a huge cup of hot cocoa, or a bear getting cozy by the fire, and a fox taking a nap. Stuff like that is always humorous and fun way of depicting Christmas. Here we have another example from her portfolio with a hipster Santa, which is really funny, and here we can see a snow man riding on a whale. You can get really funky and funny with the Christmas theme as well. Here is Santa in a tropical holiday doing some surfing. Again, you can take this theme in loads of different directions. Because there is so many different directions we can go, I wanted to talk about extended themes, about how you can take these traditional themes and start to switch them up and make them really unique and interesting in you. One thing you can try is regional Christmas, and like in the last example I showed you from Arrolynn, it is things like Tropical Christmas, Nantucket Christmas, Nordic Christmas, Christmas on the farm, Christmas in the city. You can bring this theme and think about the different places where people celebrate Christmas. Here's some examples about Floridian or Hawaiian Christmas by having lots of flamingos or tropical flowers or Christmas designs that have little seashells and sea glass and starfish and things like that to bring in that tropical vibe because not all people celebrate Christmas in a cold climate. Again, if you just put Santa hats on anything, it pretty much makes the collection Christmas. Here is flamingos with Santa hats. You could put Santa hats on pineapples, who knows? You can also stylize Christmas in a specific style or art forms such as art deco, you could do black and white designs, pastel colors, pink Christmas, white and silver is a beautiful sophisticated color palette, you could do black and gold. You can also try the rainbow bright colors. Here's some examples for a very modern Christmas if you wanted to do a black and white or farm house look or something like that. Keep it really stylized and beautiful. You can always create a collection around that. Taking inspiration from different interior trends. Here's another example with pastel Christmas by having all the beautiful pastel colors, pinks and mint greens. We also have retro Christmas. You can do mid-century modern graphics, or the '70s, or Victorian era. Again, there's so many different ways of interpreting Christmas from the gates from before. Here's some examples of mid-century modern graphics that you could take inspiration from. Have the very flat colors and the funny modern mod, futuristic shapes. There's a specific Mary Blair way of creating characters that you could also take inspiration from if that is in your realm of your style around. Here's some incredible examples of vintage designs. Last but not least, there's so many different themes and activities and Christmas activities that you can depict in your collections to take your traditional Christmas collection to the next level. Winter sports and activities such as skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, caroling, drinking hot cocoa, sledding, cutting a Christmas tree, Christmas crafting, decorating the tree, ugly sweaters, Christmas parties, community Christmas, and Christmas pets. You can take all of your traditional Christmas collections with the red and the green and the white. You can add in these different sub activities into your collection, so you can create one that's all about ugly sweaters. You have Santa's and his friends wearing ugly sweaters and going to an ugly sweater party, or you can show different winter animals doing activities such as ice skating together, or you consider creating a collection about communities such as the different cute little houses in beautiful little neighborhoods with Christmas decorations and wreaths on the houses and cars with trees on them. You can do old collection with cats, with Santa hats, and cats in different poses with Christmas items. Again, possibilities are endless here to make so many different variations of Christmas collections. Again, I'd like to show you my general Christmas inspiration board on Pinterest and here we can get a lot of ideas. Here for community Christmas, here's a beautiful idea for an illustration showing a winter landscape with lots of little houses with smoke coming out of the chimney and people skiing and doing different things. These are the designs that are sought after. It'd be used for many different things. Here we have another general Christmas design with snowmen. We have the winter animals in the shape of a Christmas tree. That's an incredible idea. Here we even have a little yeti which would be fun to create a Christmas collection around the yeti. Here again, community Christmas can be a home for the holidays collection. Showing you beautifully decorated doors and houses and things like that. Here this has a vintage, retro look. It's also very modern and cute. Please take a look at this board as well if you want to see what I am inspired by and gain inspiration. On top of all of these themes, you could also consider adding a different mood to certain things, so then you can even add even more variation. You can think about funny, sophisticated, cute, retro, colorful, positive, abstract, fine art look, or a simple Scandinavian look. Again, there's so many different moods that you could add to your different mini collections. Taking one theme such as winter sports, such as having little characters, skiing and ice skating and things like that, and you can create it in a sophisticated style. Then you could do a second collection with the same theme, but have it being funny or cute with animals falling down or doing silly things, or have funny animals. Or you could create it in a really colorful palette and then a very traditional red and green palette. Again, this is another way of making tons of variation for these collections. Which theme will you choose? I hope that this section has opened up your eyes to the incredible amount of possibilities there is for designing for Christmas. These possibilities are seriously endless. You can redo this theme over and over again in so many different ways, so many different color palettes and themes and sub-themes. Adding mini collections with these different themes is a great way of adding fresh new work to your portfolio, especially for this occasion where companies are purchasing all the time and constantly looking for new, fresh artwork. Please go through all of the different themes that I've presented here and the inspiration and printer sport that I have shared with you and see which theme calls out to you the most at least for now, and we can start work on our mini collection. In the next section, I will be going over how I plan my collections to give you inspiration for that process as well. 4. A Look at my Xmas Art: [MUSIC] Now that we've gone over all of the different themes that you can create a collection around, I want to quickly just show you some inspiration from my own portfolio so you can get an idea of the different kinds of collections that I have created. I want to share that with you right now. Also, another thing that I'd like to mention is that it is very important that you are creating your own unique work. The images and designs that I'm sharing with you in this class are in my professional portfolio with my agent. Some of them have been licensed or sold and some of them might be in the future. It is important that you are not copying my work as it would be infringing on my copyright and you could get in trouble. For your class project, you can of course mimic my artwork for educational purposes, but please keep that in your own sketchbook or privately here on Skillshare. If you plan on creating collections that you are going to be pitching to companies in the future, it is important that you are creating unique designs that are 100 percent from you. That applies to every class that you take here on Skillshare. Let's get into the computer and let's have a little show and tell of my Christmas designs. I thought I would go through a couple of my most recent Christmas collections. Some of them are mini-collections like this and a few of them are a little bit larger. Here is a magical Christmas mini collection that I created recently with unicorns, but with the traditional red and green colors, but with some pastel pinks and mint greens. Because it's such a small collection, these don't take me very long to create. Just a couple of days to draw and build out the patterns, so it's not a huge investment to try out a different theme that you're maybe not so sure of. You can easily add this to your portfolio and if it doesn't sell, it's not the hugest deal. It's not like you've created a 10-piece collection that you're really invested in. This is just a fun way of adding fun little trends and things like that to your portfolio. Here's a slightly larger collection that I created called Home for the Holidays and I had featured a couple of cats as well. I created three placement illustrations and three complementary patterns. As you note here, the patterns are quite complex even though they're rather simple, but it's nothing like polka dots or something like that. Here's another collection I created also with a traditional Christmas theme. I did different boxes of ice skate door stocking filled with flowers and I created three complementary patterns in the Christmas palette to go with those. Another mini collection here, it's called Let it snow and I was inspired by crafting. I like little felted ornaments with the, stitching and things like that. That's something that I tried out. Here's a plant Christmas, because plants have become so popular, so making it Christmas by adding bubbles and almost sweaters to the plant pots. It was kind of fun to do. This one was just a one-off that I created because I had the idea, but which is also possible to do. You don't always have to work in collections, but I think working in collections is a great way of using your ideas longer. I could go back and create more complimentary patterns for this illustration, it would be fun. I believe I licensed this one for a doormat. Here's a retro-inspired collection. The two placement illustrations, I actually licensed those to be on pillows. Here's another Home for the holidays' collection with the different houses and little scenes of people ice skating, windows with dogs and cats, and pets. It's always a cute idea, always nice to add in pets because people love buying designs with animals in them. Here's a Nordic-inspired Christmas collection. With all the Scandinavian Christmas designs. Here's a merry and bright Christmas collection I created, again with three placements and three patterns. Lastly, we have this collection also in the, bright colors with four placements and two patterns and as you notice, I also like to include some lettering in my work. I hope that this gave you some inspiration of how varied your Christmas collections can be. Even though these are in several different styles, I think you can still see that they look like my work. You don't have to feel like you always have to do artwork that's exactly in your very defined signature style. Christmas is a great way of branching out and trying something a little bit different. Now let's jump into Procreate and we'll get planning. 5. Project: Plan Your Mini Collection: Now it's time to plan out our collection so we're here in Procreate. I had started a file here. I quickly sketched out some colors that I'd like to use for this collection. I want to go with a traditional look, like I showed you. I think that you with Christmas most of the time, you've got to have red and green. So I had the red and the green and then I've added some more fun pops of color because I'd love to do like a Marion bright collection that has my colors. I love turquoise and pink and yellow, those are my favorites, so I'm adding that to the Christmas palette and hopefully that will work out, but that's what I've sketched out so far, just to have somewhere to start. Then I'm just going to choose a regular sketching pencil, just anything. Any color, darkish color. I'm going to create three wall papers here and these are going to be my little ideas for stuff. There's no actual formula for any collection. You can do what you want. You could do all illustrations, all patterns, a mix of both but I think my favorite setup is having one placement and two coordinating patterns. One looks slightly more complex and a simple pattern. This general mini collection with one illustration in two patterns is really versatile because you can use it for all kinds of things. Like I've mentioned several times before, I think already, but a placement illustration that one can be used on the front of a gift bag or something like that. Then the two coordinating patterns could be on the sides of the gift bag, or they could be the tissue paper that goes inside, or this could be for a homework collection, the top of a gift box or a mug. Then the pattern could be on another item in the collection or a pillow with one side has the illustration on the front and then a pattern on the back or sheets. The possibilities are endless there. If we're going to go into my placement. I think I want to do a straight up Santa. I don't think I've drawn a Santa before, so it's high time I add a Santa into my collection. My idea is, I want it to be a really close up look of a Santa here and have some text in his beard. Give him a Santa hat. Nice and fluffy. These are just my idea sketches. This is going to be really messy. This is just to give like a thumbnail look of what this collection going to be. Here is that little nose, round. He needs some rosy cheeks, big fluffy eyebrows and eyeballs. They should be close together or a little bit further apart. A little happy mouth. There we go and slight background. I don't think there'll be much room for a background, but little trees or snowflake. In his beard, I think it would be fun if it said Marion bright or Holly Jolly. Maybe Holly Jolly is fun; Holly Jolly. Then we'll see if we're going to add anything other than that, maybe some, what are these called? Holly, since it's Holly. Holly Jolly but add some Holly in here. A close up of a character I think I'm going to start off with as my main illustration. Again, this could be a card, could be a mug, could be a pillow. It could be a wall decor, plaque thing who knows. It's something that you don't really have to think about that, but just having an illustration in your collection is going to be nice. I don't know if his eyebrows make him look a little concerned, so we'll make them look a little bit happier later. The next pattern, I want it to be with lots of characters because that's also something that I don't have in my portfolio so much of, is lots of character, I usually do objects. So that's something I would like. If you're going to do a pattern with characters, I think it's important that you do at least three. Five is really good because it makes your pattern way more dynamic and a lot more value behind it, rather than just doing one character and repeating it over and over again. That pattern is not going to be very dynamic or interesting to look at. I think I need all of Santa's little buddies, so I'll do a little snowman. He needs a scarf or something to make him a little dynamic. Nice bobble hat, something like that. His carrot nose and his smile. To add some text because it's kind of fun, I thought he could have a little sign. Here write Merry, whatever. It doesn't fit right now, but it will. Then I thought I could have other characters that are in the scene. We got to have a polar bears since I'm thinking about the winter animals. He needs a bobble hat too because it is cold winter. I think he should be drinking hot cocoa. Let's see. Make him quite round, fluffy because he is a polar bear. He can hold maybe a gingerbread man. Then we need him to hold his hot cocoa. Paw. Again, these are just really bad sketches to get your ideas on paper. Well, this is how I always start. It's a wonder that I can turn this into anything. The pattern, I can also flip these characters. This one I can't flip, but I can flip it but with a different text maybe. I can flip it and do another one that says, "Oh, what fun Holly, Jolly, and Mary and break." That's nice. What fun, I'll remember to do that. Then I'll have snowed almost be two if I do two snowman in different coloring with two different texts. I do him 9 times 2, so now we have three characters, and then I'm going to do five. I'm going to do two penguins, little penguin buddies. I can have one that skiing maybe, it's just going to do a nice egg shape for my penguin again, I'll give them bubble hats. This one can ski so I give him another ski pole, and eyes, and a beak. Then little feet, skis, and I'll make sure to make him look happy with his beak open or something. Then we'll do the other little penguin with some skates. Can be ice skating. Doesn't have to make sense that these activities are happening all at the exact same time, which is excellent part of illustration. Let me give him a scarf, helps with the movement. It looks like he's going fast. I have to work on making him look happier. Here's a little guy and he can have some squiggles after him. Then to fill out the scene. Then I have two snowmen that I will do two versions, two penguins, and a polar bear that I can also flip. That's five characters that I can have in the scene, so it's going to be a lot. I can also have some trees to decorate around. We could add in some gifts around just to really bring home that this is a Christmas pattern. Last but not least, maybe some details with some snowflakes or something like that to really fill out the scenes so it's rich with lots of stuff happening and tons of detail. That's my complex pattern. Then I'd like to do something a little bit more simple, but not too simple. I don't like to add polka dots or stripes or something like that. Just this snowflake print in my portfolio so much. Maybe if I did a large collection of maybe eight, you could add in very simple prints like a snowflake print or a fun polka dot, if the polka dots we're a little bit wonky or something like that. But for a mini collection like this, I would want to have a lot of things in my patterns to make them a little bit more complex and interesting. Anyways, let's just do gifts. Since we had the little gifts in here, it would be fun to pull out that idea and draw some different packages with different fun wrapping paper with some dots, some with the snowflakes and some with curlies and stripes, things like that, and different ribbon colors. Something like that. Then background, we could have snowflakes again or maybe polka dots like this, I'm not sure. Now that we've planned that out, one thing that I also like to do before I get started is the background colors of all of these. I'm going to do a layer underneath, and I'm going to start painting out some of the background colors. Maybe for the snowman, I think he should have this nice mint in the background. Then he's of course going to have his red hat. There you go. This bubble should be white. His skin, I don't want to make him too white. It's nice to have a medium skin tone so that it represents lots of different people. There we go. We can do his rosy cheeks and rosy nose, something like that. Then the text, I could go in with all my different fun colors like pinks and red again, I guess. Green, I didn't use any appropriate green in there. That's my first little sketch of that. In the background also these trees, some of them could be a little bit darker. Here we go. That's my little sketch of the first guy. Then for the next one, I like the idea of this may be icy blue as the background for everything. I think that will make the whole scene pop. Then all the characters can have colorful clothing. Since the snowman and the polar bear are going to be white, it has to be a background that white will pop off of, so it's not going to be too light. Again, I have the green for the trees. We need to get some reds in this, and maybe the snowman or the penguin has a hat, and the polar bear can have maybe a darker color sweater. Then the presence can all be these pops of bright colors, and pinks, and reds and things like that. We're going to go in and consider some colors there. The snowflakes even could be different colors other than white, just to make it really bright and colorful, that could be really fun. Then the last one to really round this all together, what should this one be? I want to do pink, but pink isn't traditional Christmas colors, but we could try it anyways and we'll see as we go. I think as long as we use pink with a lot of the greens and reds, then it could be fine and read as a Christmas pattern. This is what we'll start off with. I think this gives us a great idea that this is going to work well, the colors are bright and happy, it's what I'm going for. Not sure about this pink, but we'll figure that out later. This is my first ideation phase and we're going to bring this into another document and start working on the first placement. [MUSIC] 6. Project: Placement Illustration: [MUSIC] All right, now it's time to start work on the first placement illustration. I saved that sketch as a JPEG on my iPad, and I'm going to open up a new document. I like to work in 11 inch by 14 inch canvas, A3 works also very well. I want to make sure that I'm creating a high quality, large image so that this can be printed on all sorts of things. It's always great to work larger, and it can be scaled down, but it's very difficult to scale things up. Eleven by 14, 300 DPI, and I like to work in RGB so that I get all the pretty colors. I'm going to bring in my photo, this one, and I want to keep one as a little reference, and then I want to duplicate it, and I want to blow it up. Then on top of this I'm going to do a cleaner sketch so that I can see it better. Let's see if I can maybe use this color and sketch. It's difficult to see that so [inaudible] [MUSIC] I'm going to turn off my reference photos, and now I have my cleaner sketch, so I can use this. Notice that I need to give him a little hair on the side, of course. Not sure if that looks good or not. Maybe a fluffier mustache, sick and fluffy. There we go. Maybe bring it up a little bit. There we go. There's my cleaner sketch, and I'm going to start building this out in flat layers of color. [MUSIC] Okay, so here is my first Santa. I think he turned out quite cute. This first illustration is complete, and now we can move on to creating the patterns to go with this main illustration. [MUSIC] 7. Project: Photoshop Placement Illustration: [MUSIC] Now we're in Photoshop and I brought in my illustration. As you can see, I still have all of the layers that I created here, so I'm just going to show you my process in Photoshop. I'm going to take away my sketch because I don't need those layers of the sketch, so now it's complete. There's nothing really to do, I'm not going to adjust it in any way in Photoshop, but I am going to put it into one of my cell sheets that it is ready to pitch to companies. To do that, I'm going to copy all of this. If you are interested in my full process of file organization and pitching, I have a whole class around that that you can check out. I will leave the link to that in the class description. But here's a quick run-through of that, so I'm going to copy all this. I'm going to bring into my template that I have, and I'm going to paste it. I'm going to make that a group, and I'm going to call that Art in Layers. I'm just going to resize this so it fits on my template, and then I give it an artwork number and the name of my collection, Holly Jolly. Here we go, and it's finished. I will say this is a high res PSD file, and as a JPEG to send out to clients, or in my case, I'm going to send this to my agent who sends it on my behalf. I also want to take this one and I'm going to create also a sell sheet that has the entire collection. I'm going to place it in here. I'm going to flatten this image on this one. I'm going to resize it. There we go, and I'm going to place the other two coordinating patterns in here as well. At this time I can also change out my SKU number. There we go. This is ready for me to start work on the other ones. That's my first process with my placement illustration. Now, it's time to get work on the patterns. [MUSIC] 8. Project: Coordinate Pattern 1: [MUSIC] Now, we're ready to get started on our first main pattern. This one, we are going to also bring in that reference image so that I can pull colors from it. Again, I'll create a duplicate so I can zoom in and use these scratchy sketches as a first sketch so I can create on top of them a cleaner sketch. Let's do that first. [MUSIC] Forgot to mention that I'm going to create all of these different motifs, and I'm not going to create the pattern in Procreate. I think, so far, Procreate doesn't do this in the way that I want it to. I used Photoshop to finish my patterns, where I built out all the motifs in here. Now that I have my better sketches, I can refine them further before we start getting them [MUSIC] all finished. Here is the final pattern, my complex pattern. I went ahead and created all my little characters, they are on different layers, and I will then bring this into Photoshop to finish. Procreate doesn't have the tools that I want, to create professional patterns in my opinion, and I prefer the tools in Photoshop. I would also like to mention that it's important that you don't reuse your motifs in your patterns and in your collections and in your portfolio, especially for things such as characters and larger things like that, smaller items like trees and presents and snowflakes, that's okay to repeat. It's just important that you create unique motifs in all of your work. It's due to copyright because you would be infringing on yourself if you were to sell a pattern that had two of the same motifs in two different patterns to two different companies. Also, it gives more value to a customer that sees a collection that has three unique pieces with all unique motifs; that means that they would be more likely to purchase the entire collection. I hope that makes sense. Let's jump into Photoshop, and I will show you how to build out my complex pattern. [MUSIC] 9. Project: Photoshop Coordinate Pattern 1: I've brought in my first pattern and I'm again going to take away my reference and my sketch so it's cleaned up. Then all of the layer, I'm going to flatten this image now. I have this as a layered PSD as well as here and as well as on my iPad. If I needed to go back and change colors easily, I can do that, but now what I'm going to build my patterns, I'm going to flatten each motif and create a new layer for each of them. Not taking the background, I'm going to select all of the other files and I'm going to flatten them. Press Command E. Then I'm going to go in and make a new layer with each of these items. Again, if you're interested in this process, I have a whole class about how I create patterns in Photoshop so you can check that out. I'm going to just do a quick run through here. [MUSIC] Now I have every single icon on a separate layer. Now I can start to build up my pattern. I'm going to give myself a little bit more room. I'm going to create a larger Canvas. It doesn't matter what size your Canvas is when you're designing a pattern. At least in this stage, there are certain industries or printing techniques that need a certain style, but you can always adjust that later if you get in contact with the company, etc. Here we go, background. I'm going to start with this and I'm going to use the new pattern make tool. In my Photoshop class, I have that process shown. But here I'm just going to start moving them around, flipping them around, and reusing these icons until I get a dynamic beautiful pattern. [MUSIC] So here we go. Here is my complex pattern for this collection complete. You can see has quite a lot going on, but it's not too busy. There's a lot of character and value in here as I have repeated my characters a couple of times by flipping them, and I have five characters in here. It really feels like a lush and valuable and worth a lot of money. This is a business, so I could sell this for many hundreds of $, which is always good. I'm going to define this as a pattern. Is okay, I'm going to jump out of pattern preview. Again, I'm going to select all of these layers and copy them and bring them into my template again here, my style sheet. I'm going to paste them. I am going to create a group, and I'm going to call this one pattern and layers. If you're going to be sending this off to a company, it's important that you have all of your motifs on separate layers. If they have a different vision for how your pattern is going to look, they can easily manipulate that themselves, etc. But we don't need to see that one as you can just be here in the file. On top of this, the rectangle I have in the middle, I'm going to make a clipping mask with the pattern we created, it looks really nice. Just going to reduce this scale so you can see it repeated a couple of times, maybe like that. Then create a clipping mask by pressing the Option key in between the layers, here we go. Here's my little pattern. Here's my first coordinate pattern, the one that's a little bit more complex. I'm just going to update the number. There we go. There it is, complete. Again, I want to bring this pattern preview. I'm going to copy that and bring it into my other file where I have the whole collection so we can see what everything looks like. I can flatten that and reduce the size. We can see how everything's looking together. Here we are, looks nice. I think these two blues clash a little bit, but maybe in a good way, who knows? I think it'll be all right. There we have that pattern created. Now we just have one more pattern. We have a slightly more simple coordinate pattern to work on. We'll do that in the next section. [MUSIC] 10. Project: Coordinate Pattern 2: [MUSIC] Now we have the two main placement and main pattern. We're going to create one more document also a 11 by 14, to create our simpler pattern. Even though it's simple, I still want it to have some substance so that it is valuable to the collection and could be sold on its own as well. I'm going to bring in my inspiration and color palette again. I'm not sure about the pink still. Maybe I do the minty green instead like I did with the other one. Could be better for this collection. Even though I love pink. I'm going to start drawing out my little presents and things [MUSIC]. Then here's my final simple pattern, but it still has a lot of stuff going on, different packages. I created seven different packages, so it's not just one gift going to be repeated over and over again. This didn't take me very much time as you saw, but it still has a lot of staff going on in value for my collection. Again, I will see you in Photoshop to finish this out. [MUSIC] 11. Project: Photoshop Coordinate Pattern 2: [MUSIC] Then we have our final pattern, this slightly more simple coordinate pattern. I'm going to do the same process that I did with the other pattern, and make sure that all of these motifs are on a layer by themselves, their own individual layer, and I will put it together in the pattern preview tool. [MUSIC] Here we go. There we go. That's a lot better, I think that that looks a little nicer. I'm going to add one more snowflake to this area. There we go. Pretty good. I'm going to again, define this pattern so that I can bring it into my cell sheet and it looks good. I am going to then select all the layers. I have all of these motifs on a separate layer so that the company that I in the future sell this to can easily rearrange things if they would like to. I'm going to paste that into my document and group them and call it pattern in layers, and then hide that because I'm going to then change this pattern here and update it to the new one here, my geeps. I've already updated my number there. This one's already again, here as well. Again, I'm going to copy this pattern, swatch a square here, copy that, and bring it into my final set of three. We're going to see the final collection now. Just going to hide these lines so we don't see those. They're distracting. Here's my final mini collection with a placement illustration. A slightly more complex character, coordinate pattern, and a simple but still interesting secondary coordinate pattern or whatever we can call that. Here's my final mini collection. I can't wait to see what you come up with for your mini collections. Again, if you're interested in seeing a more in-depth look at my process of creating patterns, you can check out my Photoshop pattern-making class, and if you're also interested in how I go about organizing my files and getting them ready for print and putting them in sell sheets and pitching them, I also have a class about that as well. I will make sure to link those in the class description so you can easily find them. [MUSIC] 12. Next Steps and Extra Credit: Now that our mini collection is created I would love to help you understand what your next steps are or give you some extra credit for those of you that thought that this was a really fun process, and we'd like to take it to the next level. Number 1, you could consider turning this mini collection to a larger collection of 6-8 pieces. This will give companies that you pitch to even more options and the ability of merchandising this collection on a whole range of products. That means that the company wins by getting a whole matching Christmas collection from you, and it also means that higher higher as well which is always good. Number 2, you could of course start to design collections for Christmas and other sub-themes that I went through in the way to start section. If you did a traditional collection, you could try to do something a little bit more modern, or retro, or with a fun bright pallet, or go into one of the sub-themes like winter sports or fun characters. Number 3, you could translate what you've learned to apply this to another occasion such as: Easter, happy birthday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, any of the other occasions because what I've taught you here is to think about a theme, and different sub themes of that occasion, and how you can interpret that. You can easily take this information and apply it to other collections as well. By adding a mix of mini collection and slightly larger collections, you're building out your portfolio in a really professional and exciting way. You give the companies that you're pitching to so much material to look at. It shows that you can work with a certain theme to create a cohesive collection. It also gives you the opportunity of making more money as I mentioned because rather than just selling one of illustrations or pattern designs, you can potentially sell an entire collection. You also get a lot more out of your ideas. If you have one idea for an illustration, you can use that idea to create an entire collection with that idea. You get a lot more out of that one idea rather than one illustration or pattern. This way you can translate it into several designs, and you can reuse that idea up to eight times. Just remember, do not repeat your motifs. [MUSIC] 13. Thanks for Watching: [MUSIC] That's it. Thanks so much for taking this class with me. I really hope that what you've learned about creating collections you can use to create other collections as well. I really hope that you will enjoy interpreting this really cozy Christmas winter theme in your own voice and enjoy this time of year if you celebrate. Please publish your class project, your mini collection, to the class project section. I would love to see your process of sketching and planning out your collection and then the final product. Other things that you can do here on Skillshare are, leave a review if you found this class helpful. Remember to follow me here on Skillshare so that you'll be notified when I publish new classes. You can also check out my profile page because I have, I think 22 other classes that you can take with me. I would love to have you as a student there as well. If you'd like to hang out with me outside of Skillshare, you can find me on Instagram @emmakisstina. You can check out my work at emmakisstina.com. You can also join me in my private Facebook group where I have cultivated a really supportive and beautiful community of mainly women who are also trying to get into the art licensing illustration business. It's such a positive and beautiful space, and we would love to have you there as well. Thanks again for watching. Bye. [MUSIC]