After traveling in Asia for about a year while waiting for my (now) husband to get his fiancee visa, we recently finished up a bunch of original illustrations based on the manga-style of Sailor Moon and art nouveau. We decided to turn these into vectors so that we could undertake our biggest project yet: making enamel pins and other cute projects on Kickstarter! Our project is called Winking Magical Girls.
Each design took us between 30-50 hours to complete. My husband did the initial illustrations which took him at least 10-15 hours to sketch, sketch again, sketch maybe a third time, and then finally line out and do final illustration using pen and copic markers. I then spent about 20-30 hours using Adobe Illustrator to create the vectors, staying as true to the original designs as possible, while also considering the capabilities of the manufacturers who will produce our pins.
My husband, Taka, is a traditional tebori (Japanese hand-poking tattoo) artist that specializes in ukiyo-e inspired Japanese tattoo. My name is Mandy and I am a freelance graphic designer with a specialty in publication and print design. Together we run our own small business called Shishido Creative where we make original characters and fan art, as well as designs influenced by Ukiyo e and art nouveau.
More info: kickstarter.com
The initial 9 designs, vectored
The original artwork made with pen and markers.
Mockups of how the prints and pins will look when finished.
A mockup of bags we've ordered with the lineart of cute designs.
A freebie pin we designed for our backers on Kickstarter.
