SWOT Analysis: Closure to University and Snail Illustration

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Following the news of my university being closed for the forseeable future until the Corvid-19 Pandemic settles, I like most, became extremely overwhelmed and stressed by the seriousness of this event.

In order to help myself calm down and become level again so that I could actively work on my new module at home I decided to create some cute snail characters which were inspired by the artist @snail.mart and her adorable snail creations. I have included one of the designs which influenced me alongside my creation for comparison.

I really enjoyed the process of making this basic design, although I found their methods may consist of the use of procreate rather than Illustrator as it was difficult to use the brush to create each of the individual shapes without having them necessarily join. However I chose this software rather than Photoshop due to the ability to make my brush strokes have a 'smooth' more accurate feature.

I decided to dedicate my snail creatures to me and my partner considering all of the trying times we and the rest of the world are facing, and just wanted to create something to demonstrate my love and compassion for all of his help during such high levels of stress. I wnated to explore how my design would look against a plain background rather than a patterned one like that by @snail.mart 


I think one of the main areas I struggled with during the creation of this design was my choice of colours and trying to maintain the cute, pastel aesthetic whilst ensuring it remained clearly visible upon printing and digital display.

Overall, I think by altering the background on my design it has improved the overall aesthetic of my creation dramatically. I much prefer this version of my design and am very pleased I took the time to explore a different background style. I feel the reason for it looking so much better with the altered background is because it is more inline with the general style of my design, plus it provides another level of interest, whereas the gradient seemed rather out of place as there are no gradual colour shifts in my main components, causing it to look visually unappealing.

 Strengths:
I like the inclusion of the patterned background as it removes the high levels of negative space which didn't work as well.

 Weaknesses:
I am not sure I'm happy with all of the colours I chose as some are difficult to see and do not stand out against the design making it much less visually pleasing.

 Opportunities
I want to return to this illustration after doing some research to see if I can enhance the design even further. This will enable me to document my progress and see how my skills have developed.

 Targets:
I want to complete some more research into cute illustrative artists in order to explore how I could improve this design. I will then redraw these characters and compare my two illustrations to see how it has improved

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