So as I promised, a more elaborate post on how I made my header.
As written before, I made this blog in the beginning of 2018. In February I made my first post too actually, so this month is the birth month of thatsleepyzombie 🎉
Back then I knew I wanted to make a blog with the name zombie in it. My old blog was a name that my sister gave me. I loved writing in that blog, but somehow I didn’t think I really fitted the name anymore.
Why zombie you ask? You could read the story in the About me page. Besides calling myself a zombie, I also like watching zombie movies and TV series actually 😂 (if anyone has a good recommendation do tell me), I’ve always liked myths and folklores since I was little anyway.
First sketch
2017 is also a year full of roller coasters. I wanted to make a fresh start. So after numerous attempt of creating a name that I love, I came up with that sleepy zombie.
I wanted to made the blog very personal and if I could, I wish I could design everything from scratch (except the web design because I haven’t figured out the whole concept of web designing etc), I decided to at least… you know, make the header and the icons.
Even though I had did photoshop illustrating in highschool and some years in my university, I grew to resent it because of the organization I was in had different artstyle approach and I felt under-appreciated there. As a writer (they didn’t let me put my name in the article) and as a designer (no constructive feedback and unthinkable deadlines).
Which is funny because prior of being a doctor I thought to be an architect or working in design just like my sisters.
But I know in order to make my personalized blog comes true I decided to face my setback and make the zombie.
So I tried to sketch a few of the zombie design with the help of my sister. My sister said to trace it on paper and scanned it, and then tracing and coloring it in photoshop.
So as you can see there were only minor changes made from the original design. My sister said to try and make the zombie more cartoon like because she said it’s quite scary 😂 especially the brains and the worms.
You can see that the stitches on the heart represent something, which you could interpret yourself.
Coloring in…
Picking colors was something that I struggled with back then. I knew I wanted a green zombie since… zombies are identical with green. But what shade of green? And also, won’t green clash with everything?
I experimented in photoshop with colors and finally came up with two version
Ultimately I decided to use the first one. I think I made the right choice 🥰
First header
Because my previous blog color theme was blue. I wanted a blue colored header too. So this is what I came up with
But I made the second version too because… why not 😂
Surprisingly I really liked the lighter background. So I decided to use this one instead.
And that is the story of how I made my zombie and my first header 🥰
3 years later, in 2021. When I started adding my illustrations here, I wanted a little change, so I decided to change the header.
In my mind I wanted sunflowers and a rainbow. But as you might learn from me, I am very chill about this, so when it didn’t work out the first time I just leave it at that and then next time eventually come back to it.
But it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to be. First one is because the apple note application couldn’t create custom size.
Secondly because in procreate I didn’t find an eyedropper tool (procreate newbie here), I gave up.
And of course, I had a specific image in my mind how the header would turn out. When it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to be, I just shrugged and left it at that.
But a few days ago, I finished my patients early and gets to hang out with my seniors and my iPad was on that day (sometimes I forgot to charge my iPad since the battery is very long lasting), so I decided to open procreate and found the empty canvas from 2021.
I tried to sketch a few sunflowers there and ending up liking the way it looked.
Then I just drew.
Of course because of the eyedropper tool, I decided to draw the zombie from the note app and pasted it into the header in procreate.
After it’s done I went to photoshop and just took the old text 😂 because I still really like the old text and decided to use them anyway.
It’s a wrap!
That’s the whole story on the creative process on this blog. I think writing it down is a good choice since one day in the future I could look back. I hope you enjoy this post!
See you soon!
That Sleepy Zombie's Blog 