Rocky Raccoon

Hello classmates!

For this project, I chose to make a raccoon mark. I did some searching and collected images for the moodboard below, with a red star denoting my top two pics. 

I don't have tracing paper or a printer, and since we're moving out of state in a week I figured I'd better just work with what I had. So, I started sketching from my two chosen pictures and figured it would become obvious pretty quickly which direction I should pursue (it did). 

The sketches not outlined are from direction 1; direction 2 (the one I chose to focus on) is highlighted in red.

I liked the simplicity of the bottom two marks—when I noticed the negative space I was creating with the tail, I felt like I wanted to fill it with something....and the Beatle's song "Rocky Raccoon" kept coming to mind, so I got a bit ahead of myself and added some lettering to the mark. I think it's fun and I'll continue to explore/develop that, but I want to make a simple, solid mark first as that is the actual assignment.

Time to jump to illustrator!

Fast forward a bit and we have our rough AI illustrations:

The tail needs work and the curves need perfecting, but I think it's really taking shape now. The tail on the left feels more raccoon-ish but the one on the right fills the space better...maybe if I make the right one fatter....thoughts thus far? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! More to come!

Okay, I played around some more with the tail and found a curve/width that I liked:

Then I buckled down and started gridding. I was kind of dreading it, as this is my first time gridding in this way, but it turned out to be SO helpful! Hopefully I'll continue to improve this technique with practice.

On the left is the original mark with the grid overlayed, and on the right it has been remade with the grid:

And here we have it! The finished logo without the fill on the tail, and with the tail completed (probably better filled). 

As promised, I continued to develop the mark with "Rocky" lettering included, and here is how that progressed:

It might be fun to explore different colors with this when I have some more time...but for now this is where it stands ;)

Thanks so much for viewing my project! Feel free to let me know what you think—any suggestions/critiques are always welcomed!