Karolful Karolful

Pegasus of the Forest

Deep in the forest, mythical creatures make their home in the realm inhabited by other beings that shy away from the human gaze and prefer to remain undiscovered. Take a walk through a late autumn, moody woodland with majestic trees so tall that the sunlight fails to reach through to the ground level, leaving it shrouded in mysterious shadow.  

This project was a part of my ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kidspat­tern. If you’d like to learn more about them please vis­it their web­site HERE. Alter­na­tive­ly, view the archive of our pre­vi­ous projects HERE, in which I dis­cuss in detail the his­to­ry and nature of our work.

All cloth­ing-mock­ups pre­sent­ed here are pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Kidspat­tern and are used for visu­al­i­sa­tion pur­pos­es only.

Overview

This series is a briefed com­mis­sion for an Autumn-Win­ter Col­lec­tion for chil­dren aged up to 36 months old. The sep­a­ra­tion between boys and girls is dis­cernible by the affixed colour palette com­posed by Kidspat­tern. These share a base of neu­tral colours — a selec­tion of browns and greys. How­ev­er, the palette for boys is matched with a shade of sage, where­as the one for girls is fin­ished with the ever pop­u­lar, lilac.

Anchored in the theme of Autum­nal Wood­land, this design seems to echo the aes­thet­ics of medieval tapes­tries, filled with leg­endary hunt­ing scenes full of myth­i­cal ani­mals. Fur­ther inspi­ra­tion comes from a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion of fly­ing equines like Pega­sus, who because of their fly­ing abil­i­ty, have always been con­sid­ered a uni­ver­sal sym­bol of lat­i­tude and free spir­it. 

Elements Development

Draw­ing upon the sen­ti­ment of myth­i­cal hybrid ani­mals, we chose to devel­op our own crea­ture based on a young buck. I equipped him with the wings and tail of a bird and promi­nent, fan­ci­ful antlers. To the right, you can browse through the stages of the char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, from the ini­tial hand draw­ing, which was lat­er filled in with flat colour and turned into vec­tor, to the fin­ished final module.

A selec­tion of flow­ing, leafy botan­i­cals was devel­oped along­side the mod­ule to com­pli­ment it and pro­vide a sec­ondary back­ground pat­tern. All the ele­ments were kept sep­a­rate to allow for flex­i­ble pat­tern arrange­ment at a lat­er stage. Last­ly, these had to be uni­ver­sal and uni­sex enough to work for both boys and girls.

Newborn Collection

Below you’ll find ideas for a small line of com­pli­men­ta­ry pat­tern series devel­oped for the younger age group. These are sim­pli­fied and recoloured in mono­chrome shades, yet the focus remains on the ani­mal char­ac­ter. First­ly, imbued in light greyscale, it is rotat­ed and scat­tered among the inter­twin­ing autum­nal leaves. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the winged buck was also jux­ta­posed with a checked pat­tern. The leaves are scat­tered in a more dynam­ic man­ner to break up the grid of the reg­u­lar repeat. The whole design was recoloured in mono­chrome nude colours and placed atop a white back­ground. 

Final­ly, the pat­tern is recoloured in tune with the hazel­nut shades. The buck was extract­ed and used as a stand­alone illus­tra­tion in order to cre­ate a match­ing set. The pat­tern is lay­ered on top of dark­er sil­hou­ette in the back­ground, which adds to this design’s dimen­sion­al­i­ty. 

Version 1

The char­ac­ter is arranged in a reg­u­lar, even man­ner on top of a leaf pat­tern. Por­trayed as if jump­ing out from a bush, some of the foliage par­tial­ly cov­ers its legs, adding to the design’s dimen­sion­al­i­ty. The leafy botan­i­cals are very dynam­ic, but the reg­u­lar­i­ty of the buck’s repeat keeps the over­all com­po­si­tion bal­anced. This pat­tern makes a full use of the colour palette, whilst keep­ing the total num­ber of Pan­tones used at only four. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, a colour way adapt­ed for girls was recoloured in a com­bi­na­tion of light grey and fawn shades. The out­line of the botan­i­cal pat­tern has been removed, so it blends in with the now slight­ly mut­ed back­ground. This helps the buck pop out more and as the focal point, it sets a visu­al rhythm and hier­ar­chy to the over­all composition.

Version 2

This colour ver­sion focus­es on the ver­dant palette, which was intend­ed specif­i­cal­ly for boys. The winged buck is recoloured in light tanned shades and it is flipped around to now jump in both direc­tions, which makes this a more irreg­u­lar arrange­ment.  

Next, was a ver­sion recoloured to fit the dark­er shades of the colour palette where the browns are set against the space grey back­ground. All the ele­ments share a uni­fy­ing out­line that sets them apart from the background.

Pattern in Print

Below, please browse through a slideshow selec­tion of a few exam­ples of this pat­tern in print. These are pho­tographs of the client’s first cloth­ing sam­ples pro­duced to dis­play at a trad­ing fair as a part of the launch of their over­all Autumn-Win­ter Col­lec­tion. Here you may observe how the pat­tern was used and print­ed across mul­ti­ple items and how it fits with­in the wider con­text of the col­lec­tion. I have also attached few close ups of the mate­r­i­al and dif­fer­ent colour versions.

Please note that these images are pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of the client and Kidspat­tern and are used for port­fo­lio pur­pos­es only. 

“And into the for­est I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”

John Muir