Pixel Ponderer | Cold Ones
Pixel Ponderer | Cold Ones

Cold Ones

Introduction

As a long-time enjoyer of the podcast and YouTube channel Cold Ones, I began this project in 2022 - working on it throughout term breaks during my degree and completed it in 2023. It offered a uniquely broad blank canvas in which I could expand and rapidly expedite my skills in several areas including digital painting and rendering of realistic human figures, many different kinds of objects, illustration, packaging design, badges and stickers. It's also used as the banner in the official Cold Ones discord server which sits a whopping 50k+ members, where it can be viewed in use here.

Animation

This animation piece spans about a minute and a half and includes all the elements from both the sticker designs and the larger rendered illustration, it was an absolute blast to produce and allowed me to learn many a new technique in After Effects.
You can watch it on Instagram by clicking the preview below!

Behind the Scenes

Below are some bits and pieces, exports and different renders from the construction of this project, I rendered each object seperately and then combined them all into the larger banner.

Sticker Illustrations

Paired with the realistic painted renders I took the opportunity to integrate some illustrations in the form of character and symbol sticker designs that were used throughout the scene, as stickers, clothing designs and acrylic decorations. A smattering of the designs is displayed below in a y2k adjacent and internetcore layout that pays homage to the incredible designs seen on Cool Shirtz. Each illustration takes heavy stylistic inspiration from 'The World Ends with You'.

Want to snag a print of the banner or one of the stickers?

You can here

Cold Ones
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