This Washington State logo was part of the reason I signed up to GB Fans.
I knew at a glance the logo looked familiar but couldn't place Washington as the ghost (mostly because of the hat)
I think Georg Washington's hair is what makes him George Washington - and his eyes, nose and mouth; he's got kind of a smug.
So to get more to the point I've been thinking over what it is about Washington State that is unique besides being the only state actually named after a President, has five major volcanoes as part of the Cascade Range, and rains a lot.
Washington State and the Pacific Northwest in general has a great and wonderful tradition in the Strange & Unexplained.
On yeah, and I made some patches based on the Pacific Northwest Legend Bigfoot (a.k.a. Sasquatch).
Mostly I made two ..
The multiple color Circle Slash is just to show the different colors themes for the patches - I'm partial to the green circle slash since this design is intended for Washington State (the Evergreen State).
Originally I started work on the purple one with the hands and the foot and the eyes hidden in the dark - it wasn't purple when I started. In all actuality I didn't know what the colors were going to be like so I started tinkering around and in this example I show the standard brown fingers with the dark nails.
I opted for a cryptid firstly because (to me at least) it's not about just ghosts --it's about investigating the unknown; although the Ghostbusters specialize in tracking and trapping ghosts; if you're a Ghostbuster from the Pacific Northwest you can expect more than just a spooks, spectres or ghosts.
You'll notice multiple arrangements for that theme - since it is in vector I have control over how and where the hands go. The object to the bottom right with the exception of the blue one is a foot (or at least the toes). The idea is that big foot is pulling and kicking through the circle slash and doing major damage. I could do more hand gestures and change the placement around, but for the sake of this sample preview I just tossed up the most common placements.
NOW –after having slaved over a hot computer making the crushing hands I didn’t feel that the level of detail would translate very well to an effective patch, and the fact that Bigfoot is scaled down to just eyes and a nose will kind of miss the mark as being a anything identifiable. After a lunch break I came back to the patch and though a little bit about if I were to show the ghost of a Bigfoot, what would it look like.
Initially I started just taking what assets I did make and apply then to the GB Ghost. It started with the eyes, cheek accent and the nose and the crease on the side of the mouth became the philtrum (that dip under your nose just above the top lip in the middle) and later when it was time to add the little details. Mostly lines around the face to represent sideburns but to make room for all of this I actually had to increase the height of the top of the skull; to give it a higher forehead. I later added the bangs in his hair so it’s more like Chewbacca from ESB or Jedi; but longer because it’s still Bigfoot (thanks to my dog Monk, for the inspiration). I cheated on the OTHER side of by using two lines and just creating a white wedge; similar technique applied to comic book characters. In the end of the day (literally and not figuratively) the PNW No-Ghost Bigfoot patch was created.
I can go on and on about design choices and techniques applied in making this patch - I'm so confident in it's design I even generated an embroidered sample one (using an embroidery effect on the vector) just to see and show you guys what it could pretty much look like as a patch!
ALSO - Thanks to GB Fans for providing all sorts of reference materials, I used the Adobe Illustrator version of the GB Logo from this site and it was a great time saver.
Please let me know what you think - I'm NOT quite where I want to be with this patch and would like some creative feedback on this.
If you'd like to see more samples of my work you can check out my Deviant Art page
http://btnkdrms.deviantart.com