Some challenges that I faced during the process of this gif were the exporting process, design/drawing technique, variety, animation, and mechanize mockups. Exporting a gif was always a struggle when I was in school because it seemed simple but the outcome of my projects would differ from my expectations. Some projects would be too large for a regular submission or resolution would be terrible. Although the design of my progress images were taken from inspiration from Feid's past album and song covers, it became a challenge for me to create my own unique version and ideas. I didn't want to copy exactly the same style from his sources but I wanted the same wacky, vibrant, and joyful vibe that came from it. Variety to the typography was a real struggle. Typography as simple as it seems to work, required me to create and experiment with my own typography to match the drawings technique. The early stages of animation were stressful, mostly from deciding which aspects of the piece would be animated and determining what frame per second would look visually appealing. Finding mockups to create the merchandise concepts was the most challenging experience from this project, there are very limited mockups one can find and use without paying for a subscription online.

The main reason for this project was to expand my knowledge in the digital media field, specifically graphic design. I always took advantage of any opportunity to create graphic related pieces because it is a field that I find visually appealing to analyze and interact with. To work with artists in the graphic design field is a goal of mine and this project helped to reassure that this goal can be accomplished. I want to make my designs come alive in the hands of clients or whoever requests my service. A fun fact about the artist Feid, is that all of his graphic designs, merchandise, advertisements, and album/song covers are made by his sister who is a graphic designer and she publishes her tutorials on her Instagram. This inspires me truly because although I have no family members who are as successful as this artist, I could at least still offer my skills and techniques to anyone willing to accept my work.

I made the whole project in procreate. This gif was also exported from procreate. I chose to do this all in procreate because of how easy it was to create the drawing and typography, also the ability to export was straightforward. This project was made with twenty two layers, this was to create the animation process, which was mostly the typography. This project is not a rebrand of any kind, this project is a concept design.

Although the challenges and struggles that I faced in this project were present, they were all mostly easy to figure out. To export this gif file for the website, I had to export it in the "web ready" tab in procreate. This process took me a while to figure out but made perfect sense because when I tried to export it with max resolution, the file size was extremely large compared to the web ready file. As mentioned before, I took inspiration from Feid's past album/song covers to create my own version on procreate. Feid's graphic designer creates the majority of his album/song covers in procreate, which is totally understandable because of how much variety and creativity procreate allows us to experiment with. This was my reason for creating the album cover in procreate as well because I love to draw especially traditionally on paper and pencil so procreate gives me a similar opportunity but in a digital format. My references were from a random female figure online, with a luxury head scarf, and a Feid necklace I made. The only thing that wasn't original from Feid's usual covers was his signature white glasses and the color green because although I created my own album cover, I had to incorporate these two aspects because this is how he expresses his famous personal style. As for solving my variety problem, I choose to add more than just the color green. I added different shades and tints of green, my personal favorite being the color of the figures skin, teal or cyan. I animated the typography because sticking to one font style was boring and not interactive, but by adding four more styles and making it into a gif, it added more detail and emphasis on the names of the songs. My solution for the animation's frame per second was to have it a ten because it was right in between fast and slow. It was extremely time consuming and frustrating trying to find usable non-copyrighted professional mockups without me having to pay a subscription. During this time, I was still in school experimenting with different fields so I wasn't going to pay for something that I may or may not use in the future, so to work around this issue, I was given mockup links by my professor and classmates in our sharing work link discussion board. This was extremely helpful and I was able to find a few mockups to place my digital drawings on them. These mockups were not too hard to create and came out great, they almost look like the real deal.

Overall, this project enlightened me about album/song covers, and merchandize mockups. This is a field that I am very much interested in pursuing in the future.