Karolful Karolful

Rabbit’s Hideout

A watchful rabbit finds shelter in a thicket of a berried shrub. It has made its burrow in a pocket of stillness amongst the teeming woodland.

Motionless, it delights in an unruffled respite from the outside hustle and bustle. Yet, it continues to listen in to any suspicious sounding noises, since the dusk is drawing in.

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 the client’s Autumn-Win­ter Col­lec­tion, for chil­dren aged up to 36 months old. The sep­a­ra­tion between boys and girls is dis­cernible by the affixed colour palette, both com­posed by trend and colour spe­cial­ist Kidspat­tern.

The boys’ palette is a selec­tion of greys, jux­ta­posed with two tones of yel­low and mus­tard. Mean­while, the palette for girls is based on the tints of tan, along­side a com­fort­ing cream. These were matched with a maroon and con­trast­ed with a deep, rich crimson.

Both palettes are made up from undi­lut­ed rich shades apt for an Autumn-Win­ter Sea­son. 

Starting Point 

The ele­ments for this series were cho­sen based on a wood­land theme fit for Autumn. Berries are a sym­bol of har­vest — espe­cial­ly Rowan berries, which ripen into yel­low and red colours in tune with the respec­tive colour palettes. Addi­tion­al­ly, a rab­bit was intro­duced to act as a live­ly point of focus to help to break up the wall of leaves.  

Swipe right to go through the stages of the devel­op­ment, from the ini­tial raw out­line hand draw­ing — which was lat­er traced and filled in with flat colour — to the fin­ished final mod­ule in both colour schemes.

Sep­a­rate ele­ments were lat­er cre­at­ed to allow for flex­i­ble pat­tern arrange­ment, which had to be uni­ver­sal and uni­sex to be suit­able for both the male and female patterns.

Newborn Collection

Here are some of the sim­pli­fied options cre­at­ed as com­pli­men­ta­ry designs, in keep­ing with a con­sis­tent, over­all theme run­ning across all the age groups. 

First, the colour­ing has been pared back, focus­ing on the more neu­tral and mut­ed side of the palette, whilst the spac­ing between ele­ments is even and reg­u­lar and has been visu­alised in a larg­er size. Addi­tion­al­ly, some of the ele­ments have been pulled out from the pat­tern and used as a stand­alone place­ment illustrations.

The design for boys uses only the rowan leaves, whilst a cor­re­spond­ing design ded­i­cat­ed to girls fea­tures just the berries amongst small sin­gle, scat­tered leaves. 

Below you may also view an idea for a pat­tern, which pays atten­tion sole­ly to the illus­tra­tion of the rab­bit. Its mod­ern, over­size approach is par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­ed for baby acces­sories such as a swad­dle wrap blan­ket. 

Full Print

Here the main ver­sion of the pat­tern is pre­sent­ed in both colour ver­sions. The botan­i­cal ele­ments are arranged into a full print with pock­ets of clear­ance through which the rab­bit is timid­ly pok­ing out. 

Both pat­terns are visu­alised on shirts in a medi­um size, where the spac­ing between the twigs is also explored. The boys option is a dense arrange­ment placed on a dark grey back­ground. In con­trast, the option for girls is slight­ly loos­er and light, hence set against a white background.

Line for Girls

For the girls’ line, con­trast­ing options which focus only on the botan­i­cal ele­ments of the rowan berries and leaves were cho­sen. Both use coloured back­grounds, but to a dif­fer­ent lev­el of intensity.

The first one is mut­ed and uses only two colours, so that the leaves scat­tered amongst the white berries appear to pop out from the background.

Where­as in the next option, a large sized rowan berry twig is arranged into a down­ward fan com­po­si­tion. Due to its out­line recoloured in deep wine, it sets it apart from the dark brick red background.

Line for Boys

Sim­i­lar­ly, to the girls’ design, these con­cen­trate on only the botan­i­cal ele­ments. The first pat­tern uses the white back­ground, where­as the sec­ond works from a medi­um grey. Both are visu­alised in a medi­um size.

By adjust­ing the spac­ing and the colour­ing, these offer inter­est­ing alter­na­tive solu­tions to com­ple­ment the main ver­sion, which includes the rab­bit as well. 

Pattern in Print

Please browse through a slideshow selec­tion of an exam­ple of this pat­tern in print. These are pho­tographs from the client’s online shop of an item pro­duced for their Autumn-Win­ter collection.

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

“The truth is a rab­bit in a bram­ble patch. All you can do is cir­cle around and say it’s some­where in there.”

Peter Seeger