This project that I completed was purely for myself about 2 years ago. I am a fan of Japanese animation or anime, but I am a huge hater of the options for clothing and stuff to wear that doesn’t scream “I watch anime”. With anything from full images of characters to Japanese letters, clothing options made you stand out from the crowd. I wanted to create a hoodie from one of my favorite shows that didn’t have anything of that nature. This hoodie would have designs that reflected the main characters, but would be completely undetectable to anyone who hasn’t seen the show before. I also wanted to make this hoodie embroidery, as I wanted it to last. So I started on my journey to create a design that was discrete, minimalistic, of good design, and most importantly, it needed to represent the shows/characters correctly. 

There are 5 main characters for the show that i wanted to focus on, with the show heavily focusing on flowers and roses. I wanted to take the main artistic style of each character and design a rose for each of them, taking their main key feature into account for every design. This key feature being a hair/head accessory that they would always wear. These would be separate designs, and would flow down each sleeve with 10 designs in total.

The idea was to have 5 different roses, one to represent each character. Each character has a unique color scheme incorporated into their art styles, and I thought simply changing the colors of each rose would be a great way to show off that style. I felt only 1 tone was going to make them too bland and I really liked the way thatt the 2 tone color scheme came out.

Moving on to the second part of the project, I wanted to include the signature hair ornament that each character wears as part of their identity. These accessories are used as a way to complement the style and personality that each of the characters represent. I think my favorite aspect of this show is seeing how the creator weaves in different personalities and artistic styles to represent their characters, and that’s why these accessories are iconic to the story. 

I had every design ready to be put on a hoodie, 5 roses down one sleeve, and 5 accessories down the other, but the project didn’t sit right with me. I looked back and saw 10 random designs thrown on a canvas, with no resemblance to any characters. I was torn, I knew I had the right mindset and the right direction, but I needed something to get me to that finish line. 

Then it hit me, if the accessories are worn by each character, and each rose represents the characters. Why not let the roses wear the accessories? I formed the rose petals around each signature wearable and gave each enough white space to still have room. The result was that final piece that i was missing in the puzzle. I now had designs that were cohesive and represented each individual character without being loud.

This project was the first real milestone when it came to my creative and mental growth. I have always wanted to learn how to create art because of my creative brain, but I always put myself down when the thing on the page didn’t look like the thing in my head. I am a weird type of perfectionist. Instead of spending countless hours creating different sketches and refining the edges in pursuit of perfection, I have the sense of needing my first iteration to be perfect, or else my mind tells me that my abilities are not enough. However, even though there weren’t actually that many sketches and prototypes, this project was the first creative project ever that my brain allowed me to make mistakes and see the entire process through to the end. Since then, I have been able to be less hard on myself in creative pieces and have found a ton of motivation and joy in other projects!