This was a personal project that we had to do for class and it was all about
choosing to work on something that interests us, which in my case, was about
creating a concept-inspired project while applying my love for arts.
April 2025
Tracey Nesting Dolls is the name I chose for my own personal project, and the concept was essential inspired
by Russian nesting dolls. To personalize it, I decided that each of the layers would represent different
versions of me throughout my life, as well as my drawing skills` evolution. It starts with a college
version of me where I would mostly practice realistic drawing and adding more details like shading and
gradients, the next layer represents my high-school self, where I mostly wear clothes that are within the shades of
red. I would practice anime style during that phase of my life. The third layer is my pre-teen self,
where I would go out a lot on hot days, thus getting tanned. My art style mostly revolved having a cartoonish
look. Finally, the last one is my kid version, where everything was simple and always joyful days. My drawing
style was still very simple, and details were non-existent at that point. Design details would also go
down as “I” get younger.
The challenges I had doing this personal project involved technical difficulties around the software I
was using to draw, as it seemed to be glitchy at times, and it would even crash my laptop. Unsaved work was
infuriating but thankfully it did not happen too much to the point of losing patience. Another challenge
would be the actual concept of how I would bring my project to life. Looking at Russian Nesting Dolls,
most of them are round and I was not too familiar in making 3D objects. Therefore, I had to find an
alternative on how to develop them.
I drew my concepts on a paper then went to Adobe Fresco to
digitalized it. By using Adobe Illustrator, I created 4 different cutouts of the “dolls” that I would assemble once I print. The idea would
be to put the design on each surface of the package and stack them
as one entity. To make things faster in terms of drawing the graphics
and design, I used a tablet as I had more freedom on touching the
screen with my fingers and pen - it makes drawing faster. After
printing them, I had to assemble them one by one and I was happy
with the results.
