Welcome to part 2 of the Beaverwoods logo design process. I’m not going to give much of an introduction, considering it has all been said in the first post. This post focuses on the additions that were requested after the first proof was received.

The children’s ministry at Beaverdam loved the illustration style of the first proof, and we’re happy with all that had been done thus far. BUT, they wanted to add another big element. What would Beaverwoods be without a beaver?

The children’s ministry requested that I add a beaver at the base of the tree, illustrated in the same cartoon style as the tree, as well as adding their church logo to the tree trunk. So, I got to work.

Concept/Sketching

I sketched up my beaver friend in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet. I don’t normally use my Wacom for sketches, I’m a big fan of the pencil and paper duo. But, I needed a quick way to do initial sketches, as cartoon illustration is not my natural style and I knew I’d be doing a lot of erasing. Once I had created a sketch I was happy with I printed it out and inked the lines that I’d later add in Illustrator.

Vector Time!

I imported my sketch into illustrator and put together a new color palette. One that mixed well with the current logo colors, but I also added in some colorful attributes to make the logo more vibrant and kid friendly.

I lowered the opacity of the sketch, as I did in the part 1, and got to work with the pen tool. I just went through and followed my ink lines, which makes this process go much quicker and easier.

Once my outline is finished I created color layers below it and begin to fill them in. I did each color layer at a time until I had used each color from the palette.

Voila! Again!

Once my color layers have been set I dropped out the original sketch and looked at my finished beaver.

Merging Illustrations

I then added the beaver to the tree illustration, but needed to play around with sizing to see what worked the best. Since it’s a kid’s logo the beaver doesn’t need to be proportional to the tree, it’s more important that it’s easily seen and recognized.

Once I have the beaver in I extend some of the grass shading underneath the beaver to make him seem more apart of his background.

Dropping In the Logo

Once my beaver and tree are set it’s time to drop in the church’s logo onto the tree trunk. I wanted to make the logo look like it was actually a part of the tree and not just pasted on. In order to do that I lowered the transparency of the logo making the tree shadows apparent, making the logo look like it was on the actual tree.

Final Proof

Once I had everything in place I sent the final proof. The church was extremely happy with the end result and I can’t wait to work with them again in the future!

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