Case study — 02

The Banana Cartel

Character design, illustration & generative art

A full visual world for a 5,555-piece generative art collection: logo, mascot, more than 325 hand-drawn traits, story art, website and animation.

Year: 2021
Role: Solo designer, illustrator & coder
Tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, After Effects, Lightroom, VS Code
Services: Music & culture, 3D & motion, Branding

5,555unique characters generated

325+hand-drawn traits

20one-of-one rares

The brief

A team reached out on Twitter to build an NFT project around generative art: 5,555 unique characters made from hand-drawn traits, with a community focused on exclusive drops and promoting other artists. They needed a logo, the main monkey character, a website, marketing graphics, Discord emojis, storyline animations, roadmap graphics and Twitter assets. All I had to start with was the story and the fact that they loved Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The challenge

I had never worked in NFTs or generative art. I took it on anyway, researched how these collections are built, and learned enough code in VS Code to generate the collection myself, on top of the illustration and animation.

Research

I studied a lot of projects and artists to understand how "traits" work in a generative collection. HashLips' tutorials on generating NFTs in VS Code gave me the technical path. Then it was time to sketch the mascot.

Process

I started with a mock logo so they could begin marketing. Their story pointed to monkeys, bananas, a mutated banana and a treehouse, and I knew the character's face would eventually take over the logo.

Early Banana Cartel wordmarks and the stages of a yellow banana mutating into green slime

For now, the mutated banana became the mark, since it was central to the story and could live on as its own asset. The team loved it.

Sketches

Sketch to color animation of the brown Banana Cartel monkey mascot

Banana Cartel monkey mascot with grey fur on an orange background, fur color test

White-furred version of the Banana Cartel monkey on a red background

Shiny gold-furred Banana Cartel monkey on a light blue background

Robotic black and red cyborg Banana Cartel monkey on a blue background

Tie-dye rainbow fur version of the Banana Cartel monkey on a lavender background

Then the monkey. I went through many sketches and variations before landing on the final character, then tested fur colors that would later become fur traits.

Logo update

Updated Banana Cartel logos pairing the front-view monkey head with bananas and bold wordmarks

With the mascot done, I updated the logo. I drew a front view (the generative art uses a three-quarter view), plus back and side angles in case we needed a turnaround. The front-view head replaced the mutated banana, and I brought the banana back as crossbones. A second version used half bananas with crossbones at the ends. The team kept both.

Storyline & roadmap graphics

Storyline illustration of the apes' treehouse among pink trees and power lines at dusk

Storyline illustration of an explosion and smoke cloud rising over a purple pine forest

Sketch animation of a wooden crate in a crater, Banana Cartel storyline work in progress

Banana Cartel story page: glowing treehouse under a pink sky as a rocket streaks overhead

Banana Cartel story page: smoke rising from a crash site in a purple mountain forest

Banana Cartel story page: wooden crate labeled 'Property of the Banana Cartel' full of bananas

Banana Cartel ape characters gathered in front of the burning treehouse

The Hitlist roadmap graphic for The Banana Cartel with milestones over a weapons wall and crate

Next came four storyline illustrations to introduce the project's world, drawn in Procreate and finished in Photoshop and Illustrator, and a roadmap graphic showing the community what was coming.

Discord emojis

Join Our Discord graphic with three rows of animated Banana Cartel monkey emojis

With enough assets to launch the community, I made a set of emojis from the monkey in different hats and outfits, animated in After Effects with the Rubber Hose plugin.

Traits

Animated trait demo of a Banana Cartel ape putting on a blue and grey Banana Cap

Fur trait sheet: ten Banana Cartel ape fur options including camo, galaxy, leopard and skeleton

Mouth trait sheet: ten Banana Cartel ape mouths with fire, cigar, beard and slime

Eyes trait sheet: ten Banana Cartel ape eye options including laser beams, eye patch and visor

Tops trait sheet: jackets, hoodies, vests and shirts drawn for the Banana Cartel apes

Mask trait sheet: gas masks, shark grins and laser-eyed skull masks for Banana Cartel apes

Background trait sheet: ten solid and holographic color swatches for the Banana Cartel collection

The longest part of the job: more than 325 hand-drawn traits across fur, mouths, eyes, tops, masks and backgrounds. Every trait was drawn in Procreate, aligned in Photoshop and exported as its own layer.

I ran them through HashLips' art engine in VS Code and rewrote part of the layering and export script to control rarity, so some traits show up often and others almost never. About 20 one-of-one traits sit outside the generator as the rarest pieces. Below are some of the 5,555 characters it produced.