"MEDUSA" MARKETING DESIGN EVENT
BUKALAPAK / ANIMATION, ILLUSTRATION, GRAPHIC DESIGN / 2023
It’s tradition for us to brand our company outings as an event, so we named our 2023 outing “Medusa”, which stands for “Marketing Design Mau Santai”, and translates in English to “Marketing Design Wants to Relax”.
Obviously the key character was going to be Medusa, or at least a version of her on vacation. We wanted to make merch in the form of stickers, shirts, and have her appear in documents like event rundowns, countdowns, and packing lists. As a treat, we also made an animated walk cycle.
My Illustration Team members – Wilman and Fairuz – started the initial sketches with my direction, then as a Lead I refined the design and colors. She originally had legs, but we simplified it into a snake body to make it easier to animate. We think it also made the character design more distinct.
I did the rough animation on Photoshop, starting with key poses, then the inbetweens. Because it’s a relatively simple loop, I did the animation in sections. First I made the body and snake tail move, the the head, the arms, etc. I made sure there was some handdrawn polish in there, so made sure to add details like secondary movement.
The linework was done by Fairuz, both because I had to delegate (I’m technically a Department Head so I don't usually do hands-on work in the office anymore) and wanted to mentor my team on animation. There was a few mistakes – mostly minor loss of detail – but I think the end result is still very good.
Once the character was finalized, we delegated the various tasks to be done. Various poses for stickers and documents were sketched out, approved, and refined. While there are some minor inconsistencies in character design once drawn by different hands, we were pressed for time and the differences would be negligible to the average user. You’d think I would hide this fact, but I think it’s important to recognize that when working with a tight deadline, artistic perfectionism must be balanced with managerial pragmatism.
If you like what you see and would like to work together, shoot me an email at nickyinprogress@gmail.com
