We were commissioned by the New York Times to illustrate December´s edition of the Smarter Living Guide series, "How to Dress Up".
We created an illustration for each section of the article, showing how to dress for different social occasions from casual ripped jeans and sunglasses, dressy casual with its smarter shoes and more refinement, smart but comfortable business attire, elegant semi formal for a cocktail party, and from black tie´s tuxedo and sparkly dress through to the most luxurious white tie.
We wanted to evoke a sense of atmosphere in each illustration relating to the style of clothing, but without it being too realistic. The blocks of colour work to create different environments, blocking the light in interesting ways and giving the characters something to interact with. With a simple structure, we imagine a wall in the street, a terrace at a cocktail party or a red carpet.
For this project we wanted to push ourselves in the level of detail and the precise fit of the clothing. This was a particular challenge as we had to model 12 different characters and create clothing which fit their body type and personality.
Whatever the occasion, Cabeza Patata characters have something in common: they are comfortable in their clothing and confident in their surroundings.
We created a Header Animation which touches on the light tone of the article, and takes itself less seriously. We show a situation we can all relate to: looking in her wardrobe full of clothes, but not finding anything to wear.
We first designed a diverse range of characters and chose their clothing depending on the situation, combining 2D illustrations and photo references. As the illustrations are based on a fashion shoot we took reference from real photography both in the positions of the characters and the lighting set up.
