What makes you happy?
The goal for this personal project was to capture what happiness looks like on the packaging of a happy meal box. The idea to create a more unique and abstract solution that would blur more direct relationships to me from an outsiders perspective. This was my second project working in Blender, which is the program used that makes up almost all of the panels in the packaging. What I ended up with was a series of marketable little characters on a box that uses subtle details about me to create what I consider happiness.
When trying to figure out what my source of happiness was, three main pillars sparked into my head which are design, friends, and food. It was through this that I determined that hanging out with my friends was the most valuable thing in my life. I do nearly everything with my friends and no matter where we go, we make it a fun time. Many branches of the map still lead off into paths that would eventually be implemented in the design of the characters and set pieces. I knew I didn't want to just stick pictures of us onto the panels as that would be too personal. This is where the idea of creating 3D versions of my friends came into play.
The idea was to challenge myself to create scenes and characters in Blender that were personal to me, but broad enough that anyone can relate to them. The biking trail comes from the fact that I love to ride my bike around town, not necessarily for transportation, but just to enjoy the view. The temple panel comes from a picture I took while in Mexico and the dance scene comes from us loving to go out. In terms of the design of the characters the small green one, Roundy, is big and low to the ground because they "keep me grounded." The tall yellow one, Birdie, has a long neck because my friends always "stick their neck out for me." The blue one, B-Guy, is a sideways B because my friends will always "be there for me." Finally all of them have the iconic McDonald's smile because of the fact that while mind mapping I realized how much I eat Mcdonalds. Combine that with the fact that this makes it marketable to McDonalds consumers and you have exactly the answer I was trying to find.
The first step was to just jump into Blender, so as a refresher to the program, I did this by creating the necessary 3D version of the smile. This would allow me to easily crop it out of all of their mouths once the characters were made. Next, was to actually model the characters based off of the sketches. All of them were created at least twice to ensure the poly count could be smoothed and also smooth enough when inserting the smile. The scenes were created using a picture backdrop along with 3D versions of the floors. Grass was created for the biking scene and a bumpy text-ured ground was created for the Mexico panel (even though I knew it was going to be out of focus.) Once the final dieline was completed it was time to construct and craft the box for the mockups. Physical versions were hand crafted and photographed for the final product.
This brand redesign was created for a class project, with no affiliation to McDonalds. All images, logos, products, videos, and other copyrights or trademarks featured, mentioned, or referred to within the project are the property of McDonalds. The use of the trade name, copyright, or trademark in my student portfolio for identification and reference purposes only and does not imply any association with the copyright or trademark holder of their product or brand. My work is not affiliated, associated, authorized, maintained, sponsored, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with these copyright or trademark holders. McDonalds does not sponsor or endorse any of the shown work. I declare no affiliation, sponsorship, nor any partnerships with any copyright or trademark holders.
