Imagining the Zoo of the future
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Tucked in the lush green forests of Singapore is the Singapore Zoo. With 1.7million visitors a year, it is one of the country's top tourist attractions.
When their mother company was undergoing a digital transformation exercise, I was asked to create an illustration showing how their operations could evolve in the future. The illustration would then be printed in a coffee table book that would be distributed internally.
This is the result.
The Process
1.
The Plan
The Plan
After the client sent over the main text, I did a quick pencil sketch to layout the scene.
The style was adopted just so I could sketch quickly while still communicating the main gestures and expressions of characters.
The style was adopted just so I could sketch quickly while still communicating the main gestures and expressions of characters.
I also tested different ways to show the roles people played. The client would later ditch this requirement.
2.
Drawing the Characters
I sketched the figures in Photoshop, then vectorised them in Sketch. I found Sketch a thousand times more intuitive to use than the monstrosity called Adobe Illustrator.
Diversity and Representation
Although more than half of Singaporeans ethnic Chinese, Singapore is a deeply multicultural society with significant populations of Malay and Indian Singaporeans.
In a silent tribute to that racial diversity, I made it a point to show the different ethnicities of Singapore in various roles working together. I also wanted to show female zookeepers to pay tribute to the women who work in the otherwise stereotypically male job.
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Evolution of the Operations Centre
We went through various iterations for the operations centre as we went about making it look cool and futuristic, but still grounded and design-thinkingsy.
3.
Harmonising the big picture
With each small part done, I put everything together in Photoshop, then drew the background in.
Hmmm... Some more harmonising seems necessary...
4.
The final cut
