A new Flakkees beer is available at the Solaes Brewery. Suukerpunch, what kind of translates to Suikerpunch in Dutch and Sugarpunch in English. The Brewery asked me to design a label for a Caramel Shortcake based beer and that was not an easy task at first. I did not have any clue where to start with that. Just a piece of cake would be boring and too easy. But after thinking about it for quite some time and many pages of sketches I figured that I was making it too hard for myself. It is about sugar and it is a heavy beer. That is where it all started...
This little sketch was the one where it all started with. An angry sugar beet ready to fight. Because why not? these sugar beets grow over here and I thought it would be funny as hell to see some one pull one of these assholes out of the ground.
The character was made with pen and ink and after that I did the colors with watercolor paint.
This was the first one. I thought this would be awesome to see at the label. But it did not work out at all. It would not fit well on the label, he was a bit too "street fighter" and composition wise it was not the best thing ever. But failing and being a your own worst critic is not always the worst thing ever. That is why I made a new design based on this one.
He could have been more angry and scary. A super angry strong sugar beet was even more funny in my opinion. That is why I drew some facial expressions to make it a funny and angry face. I had the angry voice of the Red Gobbler from Solar Opposites in my mind while drawing this one.
After that I was ready for the design fase. I've kept the colors of the first design because I liked the pale dirty look from the guy living underground. This time it did fit perfectly in the circle of the label. I designed this template with one of the best designers I know, Meijk van Nimwegen from Not a Number so I have some rules to keep myself coloring within the lines. Without his skills I would just be smashing typography and hellfire all over the place.
Anyhow, it was awesome and here is the final result.
I changed some of the colors of the label to compliment the illustration and give it a bit more peace in the design. It also has a bit more of a reference to the caramel shortcake. the brown and orange works well with the greens. So yes, I am happy with the result and I don't know how it tastes because I don't consume alcohol anymore but the response of other beer lovers was great!
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