Enamel Pins - Drag Race Edition.

For this project we were given the task of designing enamel pins for a subject of pop culture. Initially, I wanted to create pins for Prince, as he was extremely iconic, and one of my favourite artists in all aspects. However, RuPaul's Drag Race seemed ideal for this type of brief as the Queens are already exaggerated characters, so I could really push the design as far as I wanted to. 
     I began by sketching out the designs of the Queens that I wanted to adapt. I chose Trixie Mattel, Alaska Thunderfuck, and Monet X Change.

After doing a sketch that I was happy with for each Queen, I took each drawing into Illustrator, and began to trace over the lines with blocks of colour. Once this was done, I placed a stroke around all of the lines as this would be the enamel lines.

I spoke to Dwayne while still in the process of doing this, and he suggested to look more in depth into the limits and rules or creating enamel pins, and to alter my designs to suit the actual medium. Therefore, I increased the thickness of the stroke around each shape and colour, and removed all of the gradients from my designs. This is because gradients are not possible to create when making real enamel pins. I also looked into the possible colour options for the enamel, and decided that black enamel would best suit my designs for the clarity of the images.

To finalise the designs, I then placed a gradient on all of the outlines in place of the black stroke. This was to emulate visually the idea of the enamel having a shine to it, but I made sure to keep the majority black so it was still clear that black was the actual colour of the enamel.

Then, I designed the backing for the pins. I first created a tiara shape for the top, as a reference to the winner's crown, and then added a rectangular base. The pink glitter colouring was also a reference to the TV show as the 'Werkroom' is always almost entirely pink, as well as the runway. It didn't seem like there would be a more perfect colour. To finish, I added the text, the pins and drop shadows to make the pins overall appearance look more realistic.