The first of The 16 KEYS has been created in its new design to become part of The 7 of 9. In fact, digitally, there have been 2 created. The one that was completed was KEY 2 ◊ MIND OF FREEDOM. This key is about strategic mastery — infinite strategic ability. As part of this design project, a plan has been created for how the rest of the keys will be visually organized, and the aesthetic has been chosen for all. As you can see, these are loosely based on the diamond shaped glyphs which are currently in use for The 16 KEYS. However, the use of triangles instead of diamonds has dramatically altered the aesthetic and approach. To me, it seems alien looking — something which I find very fitting to triangles and The 16 KEYS actually too.
The visual direction for each key will involve choosing a sector of the overall design to expand into shapes that go beyond simple triangles. Here you see simple triangles on the top half and more expanded shapes on the bottom. This layout formed randomly as I was exploring what looks best. Later, I made decisions on which keys will have which sectors designated to fuller exploration of shape. There will be two keys for each category. I had a choice between KEYS 2 or 3 for this one, and I went with 2 for what might seems the most thematically relevant to The 7 of 9 overall.
Here is the plan for the layout. There are 8 categories of visual organization and each will have 2 different cards for each as you see on the digital design in the gallery :
- bottom third ⨺ KEYS 1 & 11
- bottom half ⨺ KEYS 2 & 3
- bottom and middle third (2/3) ⨺ KEYS 4 & 5
- middle third ⨺ KEYS 6 & 8
- middle and top third (2/3) ⨺ KEYS 7 & 15
- top half ⨺ KEYS 9 & 10
- top third ⨺ KEYS 11 & 12
- whole ⨺ KEYS 14 & 16
These categories of 2 each seemed to want to be used in order to encourage guided pairing of The 16 KEYS. For that reason, I have organized each pair as 2 cards that go incredibly well together. This way, each pair was able to work out as highly compatible.
How The Art Was Created
The work in progress images are above on mobile and to the left on desktop. I started off by designing this in Adobe Illustrator. This was definitely necessary for time-saving as there was a lot of trial and error involved. The goal was to loosely imitate the layout of the previous version of The 16 KEYS in diamond format — this time in triangles. I knew it would not be as simple as it sounds, as visual balance is harder to find with triangles. Through experimentation and some mistakes, I figured it out digitally. I often flipped both triangles upsidown and back again to test if they looked good both ways.
I then used a ruler to mark out a grid of triangles throughout the black cardstock with a mechanical pencil (my favourite type of pencil). Once the digital design was fully copied out, I filled in the shapes with gold ink pen, which is similar to painting with a brush. Finally, I pulled out my new crayons I bought for this project.
I tested them on the black cardstock to decide on a color from the 64 choices, and I was unsatisfied with them all. I felt it wasn't coming out very strongly colored. Despite that, I chose a color similar to the existing KEY 3 in The previous 16 KEYS and moved forward, and was more than amazed by the visual result when filling in the entire background. It looked so velvetey, and I loved the way it was darkened by the black background. In the end I felt crayons were the ideal choice to allow for the black to show through.
I knew this would be the most time consuming and challenging of all the tangible art for the prototypes, and it did take several hours. However, most of the time was put into laying out the digital template. I feel it may only take 2 or 3 hours to do each card. I'm disappointed that it will take so long to do each one, but I feel the choice to produce them as tangible art is important. Although it's not necessary in order to preserve my credibility as an artist and assert that they are not AI generated (since they look so original and have so much sophisticated planning behind them) it was necessary in order to match the rest of the prototype. The rest of the prototype does require that type of special treatment. I feel good about this investment as it's always nice to have more tangible art created and I find the process therapeutic.
Add comment
Comments