Design Collections for Art Licensing

1. Welcome to class!: Hello everyone and welcome back to another class where we can see [inaudible]. I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer from Mariefred, Sweden. In 2017, I exhibited at sir ticks for the first time with my art collective, Swedish creatures. Since then I have learned what a super huge asset working in collections has been for my portfolio and for my artistic vision, my work. I think that it's helped me develop my artwork even better. It's more versatile for my portfolio. I can sell it to multiple different industries, from homewares to partyware to stationary, kitchenware, et cetera. In this class, I'm going to be going over why collections are great asset for your portfolio and why you should be working in small and larger collections. I'll be going over what makes up a collection. I'll be going over how to actually design and build out and design a collection, all the different kinds of themes you can think about. What you should be thinking about when you are designing your collections. Then I will go into the process of showing you how my process of creating a mini collection. Then as your class project, you'll create a mini collection of your own. I really hope that you will enjoy this class and that you'll find it informative. We'll love learning more about collections because this past year I feel like I've learned so much about my own style and creating collections in my portfolio is becoming stronger and stronger and I can't wait to pay it forward and share the information with you guys. Let's get started. 2. Why design in collections?: Why should you be working in collections anyhow? I think, or what I have learned when working in collections is that, you'll get a ball rolling with an idea and you can create a few items of work that go together and mix and match. It's really exciting and the great vehicle for creating really good work then, works well together and really exploring a certain subject. It's very commercial as well. It becomes very easy to sell when you have a collection, looks so put together. You've sort about all the different details and different industries that these illustrations and patterns could work on. You put it together in a beautiful package and gorgeous sell sheet and they all work together and they coordinate. Then the customer that comes up to you, and looks at your portfolio. They flip through and they can really envision the different patterns and illustrations on their products and what they can use all the different details for different areas of the project products. Collections can be really versatile because you can build them however you want to really and I'll go over that real soon. But you can create mini collections and slightly larger collections and full huge collections, totally up to you. You don't have to constantly have a template, a collection that you always create. You can for every theme that you're working on, you can create a different collection with different amounts of patterns, illustrations just all depends on your vision and how you'd like your portfolio to look. I enjoy collections as well because I think that they really showcase your work in a professional way. When someone is flipping through your portfolio, they can really see your vision. They can see how good you are as a designer and the way that you think and how your artistic brain thinks and puts patterns and colors together. When you work in collections, you also give buyers lots of different options. When you present your work in collections, maybe a slightly larger collection of eight pieces,eight art buyer can pick and choose the ones that work for them the best, and they have lots of options, or they could buy the entire collection. Why not? You can make a little bit more money than if you just create a one-offs. Then they would have to go through your portfolio and sort through what they think works well together. You've already done all the work for them. They can really envision all the different little pieces of what can go and look together in their collections, when they buy it from you. Then I like thinking of collections as being very versatile. It's not just for fabric. Even though creating fabric collections is really fun, there is only one industry. There's so many different industries in art licensing in the art world that you can create collections for. Some of the great collections, you don't even have to have an industry in mind. You can just create the collections and they can be versatile for many different collection or industries, such as; home wares, party wares, stationery, fashions, stationery, greeting cards like gift bags, gift wrap. Imagine having a collection where in a homework collection, where you have created illustrations that will be perfect for wall art. Then they'd have a coordinating bedding reset with a gorgeous illustration like decorative pillows and then pattern, bedding. They all coordinate, look beautiful and you’ve sold into a company and entire look. They have all the pieces that they can use to sell their products later. If you think about like a party ware set, where you've created illustrations that go on to the paper plates and cups. Then there's coordinating fun patterns for napkins and party hats and things like that. The sky is the limit when it comes to creating collections and what they can be used for. Hope that you will find it interesting, you grade them and find it an asset for your portfolio because I really have. 3. A quick rundown of art licensing.: I should probably also maybe mention, for those of you who are new to the art licensing world, what does that even mean? What art licensing means is that you have a portfolio of ready made illustrations and pattern designs in collections or one-offs, completely up to you, of course. But these artworks are already made. You've already created them. You showcase them at a trade show, online, in your portfolio, somehow. Art buffs take a look at it, they go through, they purchase outright or they license, which means pretty much renting. They rent your work for a amount of time in a specific category. There are a lot of details that have to deal with art licensing and what goes into different deals. But that's the gist of it, that they either rent or completely buy your art for forever. What's great about art licensing is that while you might often work freelance and in-between jobs, that you can work on your portfolio and you can sell the pieces that you have in your portfolio individually or in collections. It's a great way of making money, as well as working freelance is another way of adding a different diverse income stream to your business. You don't have to deal with customer requests often. Many times, people or the companies will just buy the outright or they will license it as is and you don't have to do any customization, so you do all the fine creating and then you sell off the work or rent it, license it, and that is how that works in a nutshell. That's like the cliff notes super easy version. 4. Types of collections.: Now that I've given you an introduction into why I think collections are important and what collections are and why you should be working in collections and what this can entail, I think we need to dig a little bit deeper go into detail so that you really know what I'm talking about. Let's jump into my computer and I will show you some examples, and go over some of my collections and go from there. I'll teach you all about collections for art licensing. We're in my computer. Welcome. I want to show you two collections that I've created, one mini collection and one more larger collection. Now, I usually try to stick to creating quite small collections because I easily get overwhelmed by trying to create a 12 piece pattern collection. After four prints, I'm just throwing stuff in there to get it done and it doesn't really coordinate, it starts being not cohesive. It becomes different styles, so I really like creating smaller collections and I can really focus on one theme for a couple of prints and then move on to the next theme. Then my portfolio can easily be full of different themes and I don't get bored or I don't get overwhelmed or stressed about having to create tons of different patterns because it's not always important. Many industries don't need 12 prints only you should as a fabric industry. When I created my fabric collection, it was only six prints to begin with. I think having collections of maybe six or eight is great to show how versatile and that you can work on a theme. But it's not necessary all the time. You can work in small, little collections. Let's start with the mini collection. My favorite way to set up my mini collection is one placement print, one illustration, that's the main illustration and then I'll create two patterns. I keep these patterns quite detailed and huge. I don't work on creating the traditional fabric collection with blender prints, I don't think that those are usually very necessary for a collection is just fluff and filler. The in-house team at the company that purchase your artwork, they can easily create those coordinating blender prints of polka dots and stripes. They can use icons that they can pull from the illustrations that they purchased from you to create those patterns. They most likely aren't going to be interested in buying those types of patterns from you. Not necessarily, it happens if they want to buy the full collection, maybe they would be included and they would really value that. But I love the three because it really gives you a sense of what it can be used for and they coordinate easily and you don't get overwhelmed with creating too much. Here we are at my modern jungle illustration and I was working from the new, there's a lot of jungle trends and I've been using these contemporary colors, which is really fun. Again, this could be used for all sorts of different industries, it could be used for home-wears, it could be used for kitchen maybe. Who knows? Water bottles? The sky is the limit really. Another thing I should mention about collections is that you should try to make them as versatile as possible. I do like having one illustration at least. But some collections could be just illustrations, three illustrations or three patterns. But my favorite, like I said, is one illustration and two patterns. I think that's a nice look. When you are creating your collection, you have to make sure that you never reuse the same motifs that you created in one illustration or pattern in the next pattern because it becomes copyright issues. If that makes sense. These leaves, these blue leaves, I can't draw the same ones over here. These ones, I made pink and I completely redrew them so they're not the same leaves whatsoever. I didn't just copy, paste. That's a big no-no because if you were to sell this collection to two different companies, if it wasn't sold completely as a collection to one company, there would be a copyright infringement against each other, which is no good. Make sure that you're always redoing and redrawing different motifs. They can be similar of course, like I created the cheetah but it is two different poses and then the tiger and then the leopard are different poses as well. Here in the other print I created palm trees that I didn't use in any of the other partner or illustration. I made sure to have three different backgrounds. It becomes also very versatile and it coordinates beautifully. It's not all the same background color that can be really boring to look at. I just wanted a nice mix. I've used the exact same color palette and the color palette only has around 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, maybe 10 colors. I haven't used all of the colors in each pattern but for the most part, yes. Just those are things to think about. But I really like creating mini collections like this and it is so versatile. There's so many things that you can think about. Let's move on and we'll look at my larger collection of six. This is another collection that I've created recently, and it's called Road Trip In and it has the Bohemian trend that's going on right now. I like working with trends. In this collection, I have two main illustrations and then, I have two secondary patterns that are quite detailed and then, I have two patterns that are a little bit more simple in a Southwestern style. I think these coordinate really nicely as well. I have the same color palette that I use throughout the collection. I have different color backgrounds for the different pieces. I've used the same one on these two and then, I have 1, 2, 3, 4 that I use throughout the collection. It's not all the same background color. The patterns are made up in different ways as well. That's something to think about. Here like icons that are tossed around and then I have one pattern that's more structured in lines, in rows and then, I have the two Southwestern patterns that are classically Southwestern. One's a little bit more detail and one's a little bit more simple. The two illustrations can easily be used and a company could add text overlay, or they can easily use this in different ways. I was thinking maybe this could be a home-wear collection and the illustrations in the middle, they could be wall art and then, they could be bedding with the camper van as main print. Then one of the Southwestern patterns could be a nice coordinate to have on the back, or on the pillow cases or something. There could be other decorative elements throughout the home-wear items that could be used with this print, where they can easily, the company who buys us this they can pull up icons to add to different items, to different products. Like the guitar they could put on something. Sky's the limit. That's what you want to be showcasing in all of your collections, sorts of value to the customer that they can come up with tons of different ideas of how they can use these different patterns. Even within the patterns that they could use certain items for some other projects such as my icons. There's tons of different icons that they can pull out and use in different products. All these patterns and illustrations can be used for different industries, because I haven't made it into a birthday collection or a wedding collection or something like that. But that can also be useful to as a sell point. I'll go over that in the next section. But let's make quick overview about collections working in a mini collection or in a slightly larger collection, and you can build these up how ever you want to. You can have six placements or six patterns or two illustrations or three illustrations and four patterns or three patterns and it gets a little tongue twisty now, but you catch my drift. It is completely up to you. There's no set rules for creating collections. But I would say that I would nudge you to add illustrations as well into your collections and not just create pattern collections, it becomes a lot more. First do it for different industries to create work. Also don't worry about creating super simple illustrations or patterns to add into your collections as they can often be created by the in-house designers and they are sought after when you are selling your work. They're more interested in these main detailed patterns. Those are the ones that are of course, the most fun to create. Also don't worry about creating quote unquote, "small collections, " like mini collections of three or four or six or eight. Because if a company is really interested in your work and they would like to have more, they will ask you to create more and you can work together to create the extra prints for your collection and that would be a really fun process to create something a little bit more custom. You can work together. You don't have to think that just because a company, if you're pitching your work to a fabric company and you only have six patterns and they usually have collections of eight. They would be happy to work with you to create a full collection. Don't let huge collections stress you out. You can do it. These little collections are a great way to add tons and tons of different themes and occasion and moods and work into your portfolio. 5. Themes. Check out my PDF reference guide for more!: Let's talk about working in themes. Themes are really great to work from because it is very commercial. It's really commercial because a company that is looking at your collection, they can really see what it can be used for, and if it's perfect for their products. Let's talk about the different types of themes. We can work with occasions, and that's like a pretty classic that you work on either Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, New Year's, birthday, wedding celebration. Collections with these themes so that you can easily sell those to different industries mostly in like greeting cards and gift. But there are different other industries that need these types of things as well. But it's a really popular thing to work round, especially Christmas is one of the biggest, birthday and wedding is also another thing, that is constantly being sought after new, fresh work. Those are great things to have in your portfolio, and also not having to spend so much time creating huge mungous collections with these themes. You can easily create collections of three or four with these themes to add just to your portfolios, if you have them. But they don't take up huge real estate in your portfolio. You can spend more time on the things, the collections that you love to create in your signature style. You can spend way more time creating beautiful collections, for those, to some extent, yeah. You can also think about decorative themes. These are the classics such as florals, fruits and vegetables, birds, bugs, farm animals. For like farmhouse style, to animals that cats and dogs are always going to be populated jungle animals or abstract prints. These are always great to have in your portfolio because they're always going to be popular, especially florals. I don't think if there's ever going to be a time, when we don't want florals on our products. There's so many different ways of creating florals it's so versatile. Birds never go out of style. They seem to always be a fan favorite and it's very commercial because so many people like birds, bugs like butterflies, are always going to be in style, fruits and vegetables. Especially now where people are eating more organic and thinking more about their health, there's going to be more interest in creating prints for the kitchen and home wares that are beautiful, like fruits and vegetables, that could be fun. Animals are always fun. You can of course, incorporate all of these decorative themes with an occasion, to add on to creating and building your collection. That could be an easy way. You start with an occasion, then you add in a decorative element, so you can start mixing and matching and building your collections in this way if you just have a really difficult time figuring out what to draw and what you have in your portfolio. This is a great place to start. Moving on, we can talk about trends. I think it's important that trends in your portfolio as well. You don't have to constantly, always be working on trends, but it's great to have because those are selling at that moment, and I don't know about you, but I like selling my work, so I work on trends. Some trends in the past have been girl power, llamas, unicorns, pineapples, it can be anything and they last for a while. If you start seeing one thing popping up in stores, I would start drawing those because it's not too late. People, other companies are late to the game and they'll want unicorns or pineapples too. I think it's fun to put your twist on a trend and have that in your portfolio as well. Again, you can incorporate a trend with a decorative element and an occasion to really build up your collections like do a girl power birthday collection or a pineapple wedding collection, or a birthday Lama collection something like that. Then, finally you can work off of an overall mood. These are great to incorporate into your other decorative or occasional collection theme that you can add. You can make it funny, or sophisticated or cute, retro, vintage, colorful, muted. When you're creating a birthday collection, you can think that this can be super cute or it's going to be sophisticated. Or wedding collections can be retro. You have an overall look. It's important that your entire collection is cohesive, that everything is drawn in the same type of style that they're all using the same color palette that coordinates well and that you can easily figure out the theme, what it can be used for, what you're going for, and that it's throughout the entire piece. You can't just have one piece that's super retro and the rest are really modern and abstract. It's not going to fit together, it's not going to be cohesive. It's important that the overall mood is present in the entire collection throughout all the pieces and they all work well together. That's an overview of the different types of themes and moods and occasions that you can work on to build up your collection, especially if you have trouble figuring out where to start. 6. Inspiration for the class project.: Moving on to ideation, the ideation phase. Now, of course, you can use my list of occasions or think of your own and work from an occasion, or you can decide to do something just plainly decorative and pretty and create a Flora collection or a Butterfly collection or a Farmhouse collection. Then you can add on, tack on a mood if you'd like to, meet up and bringing the theme and the occasion altogether by creating it. Sophisticated or happy and you can also feel free to work on a trend if you'd like to, if you research a trend that you'd like to work on. But I thought it would be fun to share with you one of my favorite ways of gathering inspiration for a collection. At the moment, I have it really easy because my agent supplies tons and tons of mood boards and trend reports. We constantly get briefs and things to work from, from different companies so I don't often need to go and gather my own inspiration because I'm constantly inspired by all the information, that I receive on pretty much a daily basis from her and her team. But if I were to create my own [inaudible] inspiration and I have a core class about inspiration. If I want to plug another class, I would love for you to check that out too so you can dive deeper into my process of gathering inspiration and how I use Inspiration ethically. I of course, turned to Pinterest because Pinterest is the best for visual staff and I've saved countless surface patterned designs and illustrations and stuff like that for me to reference and be inspired by. There's always going to be some little details that I wanted to bring into my work or what inspired to create a certain type of illustration or style. Also color palettes can be really inspiring to open up and save and you can be inspired just by the colors they'll pop up anytime. Here we go. That can be something that triggers something like, "Oh, I think that this pink can like blend red color that would be perfect for a Valentine's collection, or this muted like sage green and pink would be beautiful for [inaudible] collection that can spark or ideas that you want to work on. But today, I thought it would be interesting to push you to be inspired by interiors. I love working from interior design because, interior designers are very talented at using color, mood, and patterns together. They'll be creating collection visually with furniture and paint. What better way to be inspired than them, I thought I'd share with you a couple of my favorite. Here's one that I recently discovered layered home and I thought this would be really exciting to create a collection from. I'm going to add a few pictures in the project gallery and I invite you to create a collection from one of the pictures that I had saved or you can choose a interior's picture of your own interests, or your Instagram. I was inspired by this picture of this kitchen which dark greens, and it's moody anything is really trendy with the cacti and the succulents, and the jungle and you can get your [inaudible] bold patterns and bold colors. There's even some illustrations of some Underwater Creatures that you can see. So that could be something that sparks inspiration for you. I think this would be an interesting interior to create a collection from. You can think of it in two ways so this is how I would think of it. I would usually think of what kind of art would work in that room that I can create, and patterns if they were to buy another rug, what kind of pattern will that be that would fit this mood, or if they were going to have another wallpaper in the background, what would that be and I can make it so that it fits into this setting or you can just take inspiration from the overall mood and the different colors and create a collection from that. That's one of my picks. I also thought it'd be fun to create something a little bit more colorful. So I thought this girl's home, Rowan's rainbow, was insane and I think it could be fun to create art for this home. There's already lot's of shifts, like gallery walls with different arts, but I don't want to be swayed by what's already there,so I'd like to pick something that's a little bit more, like here. This one we can choose, this color button is crazy and there's some abstract wall art. But if you were to fill this area of the wall with the art gallery, it would match the look and feel of the rest of the room what would that look like. So here's picture number two and here's one last one that's also colorful but also like the chic because it says, it's Retro Vintage Boho Colorful which I think is pretty cool style. I think that that's really current as well and trendy zen that's always fun to work from. But this was a great wall to think about because it is abstract art and it could be interesting to think about what to add into this home. If you were to create a collection that would fit on the wall together with these pieces or these colors and things like that, not sure which one to pick here. Maybe this bedroom would be fun. I know what I have in store for my ideas, this is the collection I'm going to be using and maybe I'll use this as the inspiration. I'm thinking like the VSCO Girl trend or somebody who's global and trendy and Boho and kind of [inaudible] , stuff like that, I'm not really sure. But then to [inaudible] something like that. I'm getting too old for trends like that, but it's fun to have like a rose quartz lamp thingy plants. Now, I think this is perfect and I have already tons of ideas growing in my head for what would match this room. So that's my little ideation phase. Let's move into building our collections. For the class project, I would love for you to be creating a mini collection of three, but feel free to do four or six or eight, completely up to you. 7. Creating my mini collection.: So now I had sketched out my ideas. I picked my color palette from the inspiration photo, and I've gone through my ideas of what I want my mini collection to look like. So I'm going to have one placement and two patterns. Going over this, I picked hold out some colors from the picture, to use as the color palette to start with. I'll see where it goes when I start illustrating, seeing what colors I need, or don't use, or how that works, but this is a good starting up point. Lots of like mincing peachy pics and the golden yellow colors, I think would be really nice, like the natural wood in those colors. So yeah, I thought that this person who lived in this room definitely has one of those Pierre Lavigne [inaudible] backpacks, that were so popular with all the youth. I thought it would be sweet to have little patches or pins on it, instead of the logos, because of course can't have that in your work. I also made the bag more round, so it's not square, so it doesn't look exactly like that brand name, because you can't have that in your work. I'm going to write, have a nice day on it or something like that. But then it would be cute if that like could be kippy bohemian bouquet coming out of the front pocket with daisies and wildflowers. So that was my little idea first job, and then I thought it'd be fun to do like an icon print with lots of different details for the fiscal girl like a water bottle, pins, patches, they're good. Reusable straw, and insects, camera, round sunglasses, gran cheese, stuff like, that's really popular right now. There would also be in all these fun happy pastel colors like boho look too, which you think would look really cute, and then just at end, I want to create a rather simple pattern with rainbows, and daisies, and I think that would be really cute. So that's where I'm going with. Then in the next clips, I'm going to show you the time-lapses of my Procreate illustrations just that process goes really quick. You could see how those are built and actually really fun, and then we'll meet up in the next section. We can evaluate what we've done, and I can go through past collections, and I show you what I have learnt, and that will be really fun. All right, lets get drawing. 8. Final presentation in sell sheets.: all right, here's the final collection that I created. What do you think? Do you think it matches the room, the color scheme, the vibes? I decided to call the collection VSCO vibes fitting. I usually don't spend too much time on my titles and stuff like that because I'm not that creative. But I'm creative, but I don't write a story or anything, especially not for these tiny collections. If I were to one day create a 20 piece collection, I'm sure I'd write synopsis in a story and all that stuff because it's quite romantic and nice, so yeah. I personally I like how the collection turned out, and I have my placement with the backpack, I have a more detailed pattern piece with lots of little icons, and then I have a more simple Daisy pattern with rainbows. I think it definitely matches the vibes of this room, and I think it's interesting way to gather inspiration. As you can see, I have placed it into a cell sheet as it's called. This is an A3 size piece of paper with my logo, it has my agents logo because I'm represented by an agent, I have my SKU numbers and the title of the arch or the collection. I don't have titles of the individual artwork and then there's information here for what email to contact with. If you were to create your collection, I would set it up in some cell sheet, either 11 by 14 or A3 and put all your pieces into it, fit in nicely either in a row or have one bigger into smaller you know it's totally up to you. Make sure that you have your logo, and your email address, your contact name, any other contact information. Maybe you'd want to have your Instagram handle who knows? Make sure that you have a collection name, and the SKU numbers. I also could make them individual as well. An individual cells sheet, so I have the same information but just with each piece individually as well. Add the logo, my agents logo, and then here I have the SKU number and the collection name and contact information. This is great to put your finished collection into cell sheets in your individual patterns and illustrations, and then they're all ready to go. You can send them off to different companies and they're all ready. When you are writing your pitch, you can just go into your files and find the different files that you want it send off, and instead of sending just the image, and then maybe the email gets jumbled and maybe they print it out, who knows, your name is in attach. But if you have a cell sheet like this, your logo and e-mail and contact information is attached to your work. It can't be confused with someone else's, can't get lost. If they do print it out or something like that, or if they share it, then your information is right there in front of them. They can get in contact with you right away and be like, "Yeah, we want to buy this or license. " [inaudible] That's how I professionally present my work, and have it ready for trade shows or sending off in pitches. I usually save a nice high res Photoshop PDF file or a PST file, I mean, sorry and then I'll save a little slightly lower res JPEG that can be sent off in emails. If you were to show your work at a trade show one day, you have all these cell sheets that are in the nice 11 by 14 or A3 size that you can print out professionally and at your local print shop, and you can take those with you, and instead of having a traditional portfolio, it's nice to have these sheets instead. There's many studios to this, so that you can easily organize them into different piles depending on theme or you can work up all the way up until the show rather than when you create a book like that, you have to do it quite far in advance, that's another advantage of doing these cell sheets. An A3 is pretty big size to get a really good understanding of what their artwork looks like and it's really a good way to present your work to art buyers. 9. Evaluation and a look into my portfolio.: Before we go, I thought it'd be interesting to do a quick evaluation, or teach you a little bit how I go about evaluating my own work so that I try my best to present the best work that I can every time. When thinking about this collection, I really use the same color palette. But I made sure not to use the exact same color backgrounds, and I made sure to mix it up so it's not completely matchy-matchy, although it's quite matchy. I have the predominantly yellow backpack with a light-green background. Then I have lots of pink going on, with lots of colors. The most detail here matching the detail that's over here. Then I have the simpler pattern with a darker green background with daisies. As I mentioned before, you should never repeat motifs because of copyright. I haven't. I have drawn similar items. Like here, my daisies have five petals, here they have multiple, and here they have multiple and they don't have as much detail, plus they have leaves. So it's slightly different. The only motifs that I have duplicated, I've drawn them differently every time, are the rainbows, but they're quite similar. But you can't really copyright abstract geometric shapes, so they should be safe. But I didn't just copy paste these. I did redraw them in the different motifs, so that could count as well, it depends. Then I'm thinking of the overall theme and the feel of the piece. I drew it in the same style. Even though these daisies have slightly less detail, they still feel like they work because there are a few items in throughout my piece here, and in this pattern that I didn't add as much detail to. I think that they have the same vibe throughout the whole collection. I'm really happy with how this collection turned out. I have three different background colors. I haven't repeated or copied motifs. I have one placement illustration that could be used as an art print, or printed on a mug, or who knows? Then I have one pattern that has a lot of icons that the company could also take out and use for other purposes for their products. Then I have a really cute simple pattern that also could be a nice complement. That one, I've scaled it quite large in this setting, but of course the scale could be completely different. It could be huge, blown up, or scaled down really small, and that would change the look as well. It's quite versatile, I think. It would look cute in all kinds of stuff. Could look cute in a back to school stationary set with folders, and then the inside could be the patterns or a pencil case with the cute daisies and things like that. I have different ideas of what I think it could be used for, and I think it's quite versatile. We could jump into my portfolio, and I can show you a couple of my collections that I'm not as happy with. That maybe I was a little bit stressed to create, I didn't spend enough time working on them, or sometime when you're just working on something, you don't always see the whole picture. You're just working and then when you're done, you're like, "Oh. It didn't really work out." I thought that that would also be interesting to share with you, just because I'm not perfect. I don't create collections that are awesome every time. Let's see. This baby collection, I was pretty happy with when I was creating it. But then the final piece just didn't really come together quite as well. Here we go. I think the color palette was off. The color palette's okay, just sad. I don't know, it's not as happy. I actually saw this print, and it's really good. I loved it with little animals like bunnies and owls and stuff. So that joint fabrics actually. That's really neat, but then the other prints, they don't really match in style to that one. So that one just sticks out as being the nicest one, and these other ones just don't match. I don't have the same vibe, even though I drew them in the same style. That's one thing that I could have thought about more. Like these were with darker lines, and these were all with really light lines except for this bunny. Maybe they all should have had darker lines, or I should have diffused this vibrant red a little bit more. In the other collections, you can't really see what's going on with these cute little bunnies, or these birds look sad. It's just not as well thought through. But I have some nice ideas here. I'm sure I could just tweak it a little bit. Plant lover, here we go. Here's another one of my collections that I created, and I'm not happy with this at all. I worked off of a trend report, that yellow and green was going to be really popular combo. But it's not a combination that I feel comfortable with or really like. I think that really shows in my work, that it just doesn't come together very well. There are some things that I like, like I love this pattern with the silhouettes on the yellow background, and my placement. Illustrations are cute, and this 'Hello You' is pretty okay. I like the frame of the different palms and things. I think that turned out really well. I'm sure if these bug and butterfly patterns had different coloring, they would be more interesting. But as they are now, and that they're the same background color, the same as this, it just wasn't presented in a nice way. If I kept this yellow background, and I made these tons of different poppy, bright, jungly colors and then I redid. This one I think I could just take away because it doesn't match. It's too linear, and all the other ones are growing all over the place. This vine pattern also, it's not executed very interestingly. I think I would totally scrap it, or maybe I would draw tropical birds and place them on the vines and have something else going on there. There is always room for improvement. I think you can always go back and change out your collections. Maybe you can find something that you can salvage, or maybe you can even break it up into new collections. I'm sure that I could do that if I just recolored, rethought out these things. I don't have to throw this in the bin. I can just rework it, think about it a little bit more, and I'm sure that it could be a pretty interesting collection. Let's see that. Should we do one more? I can share this collection. I got a lot of critique for this one from my agent, and I understand why afterwards. While I was creating it, I didn't really get, but now I do. Let's see. This collection is a collection of six. I have three placements and three patterns. I used the same background on three of them, which is boring, and they melt into each other. I also drew the exact same flower. Even though I redrew them, they're still colored in the same way, so it's on the fence, copyright infringement against my different works. I would only be able to license this or sell it as a whole to one company. If I sold one to one company, the rest would pretty much need to be thrown in the bin because they'd be copyright infringing on that sold artwork, if that makes sense. As in my text, it's a little bit sad, but I don't think we need to critique the way that I've done things, but mainly just the way I've set up this collection. Also, it doesn't really have a strong sense of what it could be used for. I was going for maybe, yeah, it's called 'Home Sweet Home', that it could be used for home products. But I guess it's not strong enough. That was the critique I received, and I thought that was okay. But if I were to go, I think I would want to switch out the background color on at least one or two of these. I would recolor some of the flowers so they weren't the exact same. The forms, I think, are okay when safe, as long as I recolor them a little bit. I think, these icons, maybe I should have made that into a pattern as well, just to show how it could be used. Rather than leaving them as icons, I think I should have tossed them around. You could see it only had two placement prints. Then my two smaller florals, I thought that they were really sweet and a nice compliment. I am actually pretty happy with this. Again, a different array of background colors is always good. Then make sure that you're not duplicating the same type of motifs throughout your collection, because of copyright. I think the way that I have drawn the collection is pretty similar. I've used similar textures, and they're drawn in the same way. I think maybe this pattern matches better, but maybe I should have added a little grandeur texture so that that one would mix in a little bit better. Then this pattern, I think is slightly too delicate when compared to the other works. Maybe I could have used that for a different collection. That one doesn't quite rhyme with this. Those are my little thoughts about this collection. I hope that it helped to go over a few of my collections and thoughts when reviewing my own work. It could be helpful for you to review and look at your own work in the future, just to make sure that you are creating versatile prints in your collection, and that you have a solid theme or idea that's coming forth in your work, that you can really see what's going on there. It's a happy retro vibes, or it's birthday collection, or Christmas. If it's on the fence, people or companies aren't going to know what to use it for, even though that's their job to figure out and buy in work. I think you can do a lot of the work for them by creating collections that are really versatile, that are really well put together, and hopefully you'll sell the whole collection as a whole. 10. Class project and thanks for watching!: All right, that's it. I have taught you everything I know about collections and I hope you found this information easy to digest, inspiring, and that you are ready to create a mini collection or full collection of your own. For the class project, you'll be creating a mini collection of three or four. You can use the inspiration images that I was using or that I have attached in the class project area or you can go ahead and use the list of themes that I talked about earlier in the video and create a collection of a theme, occasion, mood, etc. It's completely up to you. But I would find it extra exciting if you did use my inspiration, so we can really see everybody's ideas and how you have interpreted the images together. We can all see how different we think. Thanks so much for taking this class. Again, I really hope that you found it useful and inspiring and that you will check out my other courses here on Skillshare as well. Make sure to also follow me here on Skillshare so that you're always notified when I put out a new class. In between classes, please check me out on emmakisstina.com and on Instagram at emmakisstina.