The Loveblind Bird
Year: Winter 2021 - Current Role: Lead Graphic Designer
I was approached to create artwork and design visuals for "The Loveblind Bird" after one of my paintings was seen on instagram. The commissioner loved the art style, saw similar works, and said it was exactly what he was looking for, for an upcoming project. I was given minimal information on the project and told simply that it is a game about a flying ship named The Loveblind Bird and the game plays through the four seasons.
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I was purposely left in the dark because work had already been created for the game and the commissioner, Brendan, did not want any existing pieces to influence my ideas. All I was given to create these four pieces was a general color palette, a playlist of mood songs, and a single sentence asking for none of the ships to be traditional 4 mast ships. The rest was "fair game!".
Research Process
The only restriction given to me was to not use a traditional four mast ship. My first job was to research the different kinds of ships available. I had never until this point even sketched a boat much less created four separate but connected designs with ships as the center-pieces. Through general research on nautical history as well as personal knowledge through experience, I was able to locate and decide on four boats.
SPRING
Spring was the first season I designed out of the four. The flying ship is clearly based on traditional Viking designs. I picked a Viking vessel for spring due to the associations with Norway, paganism, green pastures, and early life settlement in nature. Vikings are the spring of this voyage; the beginning.
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The Viking ship provides a strong and recognizable silhouette. It was with this sketch that I hit my stride in creating thematic elements which would reappear in all four works.
After a quick check-in from Brendan on the primary sketch, I was approved to continue. We also discussed elements I wanted to include in the future designs and they were met with enthusiastic agreement.
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The four pieces would have their own floral element, design motif, analogous color scheme, and icon. These icons hold two uses as they are also for color-blindness accessibility.
SUMMER
Spring was based on the canoe, a boat associated with Native American tribes and cultures. I made an effort to have the boats in this series represent a large scope of cultures and time periods.
The icon for Summer is interpretive of the hot sun and sun motifs also decorate the hull of the boat. The boat is filled with harvested flowers which bloomed at the end of spring to establish a visual connection between the two warm seasons. Spring and Summer are the seasons of birth, life, and warmth. The tone of this image is meant to convey abundance and show life before the chill of fall.
AUTUMN
I had the boat for Autumn picked out from the beginning of this project as it is a boat I have actually been on and love. Autumn is represented by the Honk Kong junk boat. These boats were an icon of Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour and famously known for their large red sails.
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I replaced the sails on the junk boat with three sweet gum trees. These trees are also found in Hong Kong and produce a beautiful large red leaf in the fall.
The gum tree leaf becomes the boat's design motif and groups of the leaves are even seen billowing in the breeze behind the boat. Now that it is fall, the cold winds are beginning to pick up and catch in the sails.
The icon for autumn cuts through the boat. It is the last ray of sunshine that shines out at sunset before the sun truly disappears. This icon symbolizes the transition between the light and dark times of the year. It is time to seek cover as time is almost up.
WINTER
The final season, winter, is modeled after a style of iceboat which is primarily sailed on the Hudson River during the dead of winter. These boats are created to glide over the ice with the violent winter winds.
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This boat is by far the most recent boat in history out of the four vessels and it is also the only vessel not intended to be used for survival.
The ice boat was created for yacht racing, to sail at speeds faster than modern cars atop the ice surface, and not for fishing, emigrating, or labor like the other season's ships. The change in use is shown by the lack of floral presence. There is no need for life on this boat. Instead a thick layer of wind-crusted ice coats the boat's surfaces as it speeds over the frozen winter clouds. A snowflake motif accompanied by ice shard leaves adorn the two wind swept sails as well.
This boat is at the end of the history timeline just as winter is at the end of the seasonal timeline. The season icon shows how the winds of autumn have picked up and turned into full and violent frozen gusts. This boat is the final section of the game and the speed of the racing yacht represents the race to the finish as the players reach the end of The Loveblind Bird.
Next Step
All four concept pieces have been approved and are currently in the process of being recreated and finalized in Adobe Illustrator. Rough concepts of the final cards are also in the process of being created. Shown here are proof of concept designs for future materials.
