dream big

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Okay, this is a bit different from my normal submissions. :] I'm working toward a graphic design certificate, and this was the first project in the course I took this past summer. The assignment was to make a postcard that represented five of my personality traits. I also had to make my own paper, and incorporate a short length of twine. This image shows both the front and back of the postcard.

Since my dragons are a big part of who I am (I have been sculpting them for half my life at this point o_O), I knew I had to include a dragon, and in clay no less! I wanted to portray the concept of my dragons reaching across the world, so I made a sleeping dragon puffing out clouds of smoke that form a world map. The twine shows how far my dragons have reached!

Here's some information on the thought process behind this postcard, as well as the personality traits that I chose:
Quiet - I'm a pretty quiet person, so I reflected this in the fact that the dragon is asleep. The cool color scheme reflects that as well.
Artistic - Obviously, I have worked some of my artistic preferences into this piece, what with there being a clay dragon as the focus.
Geeky - The dragon may be a geeky subject, but the bigger point is that my fingerprints are visible. I send my dragon sculptures to people around the world, and the fingerprints are essentially a signature - they can be traced back to me.
Grumpy - I am seriously the grumpiest person I know. xD Grumpiness is implied here by the dragon breathing smoke - waking it up might be a bad idea! Also, the sentence on the back says, "Made from 75% post-consumer grump," which reflects the amount of time spent on this postcard while grumpy!
Idealistic - 'Dream big' is idealistic/inspirational, but I wrote it all in lower case, thus it ties into 'quiet'.... and is a bit ironic too.

As I learned, making paper by hand is messy and time-consuming! I totally destroyed a hairdryer trying to get these sheets to dry. It's also really hard to work with - I tore up a lot of paper just to get a few decent-looking continents. The dragon was also an interesting challenge - I know how to proportion everything for a figurine, but I don't ever sculpt anything relief-style, so the result is kind of flimsy and rough around the edges (so many breakages! D: ). I also baked the dragon on the sheet of paper in the oven, so that was a hilarious balancing act in and of itself. Since I'm the procrastinating sort, I waited until the night before the assignment was due to start putting everything together, hence the appalling amounts of hot glue used to hold everything together (not as visible in this image as it is in person). This was a reasonably frustrating project, but it was also kind of fun because it was more hands-on than most of my graphic design projects. And the result is pretty cool, messy execution aside. xD