2. Enya’s Character
3. Enya’s Room
4. Blair’s Character
5. Blair’s House
6. Blair’s House, Zoomed In
7. A Final Look
I challenged myself to create distinct, lived-in spaces for each character in the cast of FIZZPOP!, an ongoing digital brand project focused on the fictional world of Pop Planet. The goal was to create a series of backdrops and reusable settings that could be used across animations and social media marketing as a way of visually showcasing the 8 main characters’ personalities, lifestyles, and bits of their stories. Starting with Blair and Enya, I got to work creating their worlds!
The Rundown
FIZZPOP! is an ongoing, constantly unfurling brand project that follows the concept of a nearby alien planet filled with funky (and often unstable) characters whose day-to-day lives, storylines, and personalities serve as interactive entertainment for their Earthling audience.
Meant to start on social media and grow into marketable merch and do-it-yourself artistic inspiration, FIZZPOP! is a brand for artists and other humans who find themselves yearning for less beige minimalism and more color, more fun, and more “MORE!”
Following a starting cast of 8 main characters, a big part of FIZZPOP!’s marketing is the personalities and insight into each character’s life. Rather than telling the viewers what each character was like, I decided that a much more effective strategy would be to show glimpses of the characters’ natural habitats and let the viewers figure out the lore for themselves.
Enya’s Character
Starting with Enya, the “main” main character, I wanted to create a setting that looks as though Enya herself is giving the viewer a tour of her room. Enya is an impulsive, energetic, bright, and sometimes annoying character, and I wanted the color palette of her room to match her existing design. She is quick to act, loud, and “spiky” - hence all the sharp, uneven edges present throughout her room as well.
Enya’s Room
While Enya’s main color palette, like the rest of the FIZZPOP! cast, is fairly limited, I incorporated a couple in-between shades of saturated teal and medium orange to give her room a bit more depth and believability. The perspective is designed to be like stepping into her room while she’s giving you a house tour; there’s even a detail of the door being opened towards the bottom of the backdrop.Enya is a messy character, and I didn’t want her room to be a complete mess, but it wouldn’t make any sense to give her a pristine space. Socks and random clothes hanging out of open dresser drawers, a lopsided laundry hamper, crumpled up balls of paper that just missed the trash can, assorted posters hung up unevenly on the wall, a rug that resembles a paint spill - little details like these aim to convey the careless nature of her character.
Enya also likes to stream vlogs as a hobby, so I also created an alternate view of her room through her streaming setup. Both angles are meant to feel lived-in and home-like.
Blair’s Character
Blair runs Pop City’s most popular bar, aptly titled the Soda Fountain, and lives just above the bar in a little room of her own. She’s a witch who specializes in brewing soda potions (which definitely helps her soda business), and despite her quiet nature, she has an appreciation for odd and whimsical things. The hat that she wears is actually a sentient creature that lives on her head and refuses to pay its share of rent, so she’s still figuring that whole thing out.Since Blair lives such an eclectic life, I wanted her house (and the bar she lives above) to be a bit magical, logic-defying, and almost circus-like while illustrating its practicality.
Blair’s House
The final design ended up looking reminiscent of an M.C. Escher illustration, which was a welcome outcome. I stayed true to Blair’s limited palette here and incorporated repeating patterns and alternating angles to add dimension and interest.I mapped out Blair’s house in a very impromptu way, adding rooms, chopping up walls, and installing additional amenities as I saw fit while constructing its design in Illustrator. The result reflected its irregular, erratic workflow, and I think that perfectly encapsulates Blair’s appreciation for the bizarre and her easygoing approach to imperfection. Its almost jumbled look is exactly what I was going for; zoomed in, however, all the details stand out in subtle ways.
Blair’s House, Zoomed In
I’ve selected two rooms in Blair’s house to zero in on: her bedroom and her cauldron tower. I added a few small details to each room to hint at some aspects of Blair’s life, like her overdue rent reminders and her signature witch hat lying on her bed. Her cauldron reveals one of her soda potions, and I thought it would make sense for Blair’s aesthetic to anthropomorphize the cauldron to add a bit of whimsical flair. Her potion cupboards jut outside of the walls, and the star decor at the top of the tower’s roof adds a nice finishing touch.
A Final Look
Both characters’ backdrops have completely different styles to match their corresponding character, but the overarching art style remains cohesive to the FIZZPOP! brand as a whole. Here’s everything together in one gallery for a final look! Click to zoom.