Concept and Objectives
After the abortion law passed in New York, I felt very sad for these children who would never get to live. I wanted to find a way to show the importance of families and that families come in all different shapes, sizes, ethnicities, etc. Through this project I managed to capture three different kinds of families: Adoption, blended, and ethnically traditional. I plan on creating more stickers in the future to encompass other families as well. For now, these were the types of families I chose to start with.
Sketches
I was just sitting by myself on a bench one day when an image came into my mind. What if two apples couldn’t have little apples of their own, so they adopted an orange? It was such a silly idea but I almost cried thinking of how grateful these apples would be in adopting this little orange who needed a good, loving home. From there, I drew all different kinds of families using food because everyone loves food. It’s the most relatable thing in the world next to drawing actual people. I also love the food character style, so I tried to mimic something similar in my sketches. Any kind of family that came to mind, I drew including some non-food options. I decided the non-food drawings didn’t really fit in with the style I was going for, so I stuck with my food theme.
Incorporating Feedback
In the beginning, all my characters were kind of far away from each other and had these little black stick arms. My main source for critique suggested I try creating more noodle-like arms and move all the family units together. He said this would make it a more interesting image and he was right. I think bringing them closer together really made these families feel more intimate. He also suggested I try adding some shadows and I think this made my images feel more 3D. I ended up adding too many so after scaling back a bit, I finally got a better, not too shadowy bunch of stickers.
Final
I have never been happier with a vector project before. I feel my stickers send an important and supportive message for the family while still being very cute and relatable. I feel I captured the emotions that come with each individual family unit I portrayed, and I can’t wait to create more, similar stickers in the future. I hope images like this can help viewers understand why the family (especially children) are so important to the world today. Whether you adopt a child or bring them into the world yourself, children deserve loving homes and families. I believe I captured this uniquely through my food stickers.