Dawn's Daycare Illustration

Duration

My Role

Tools

Affinity Photo, Procreate

Why

Passion Project

April 7, 2024 - April 22, 2024

Solo Illustrator

While following the NCAAW March Madness tournament, I often watched different interviews for teams that were participating. The main team I was following was the South Carolina Gamecocks. In several interviews, their coach and other team members coined the term "the daycare", referring to how free-spirited and lively the team was. This self title became very popular among the fanbase and media outlets. This inspired me to illustrate my version of what I think "the daycare" would have looked like.

What started off as a fun passion project blew up almost overnight. My design garnered a lot of attention, likes, and comments on Instagram within a span of 24 hours. In addition, representatives from the University as well as a shirt manufacturer in South Carolina had reached out to me. Soon enough my design was featured during the championship parade in Columbia, SC, has been licensed and manufactured into t-shirts, and has been featured on various sports/basketball social media accounts (ESPNw, overtimewbb, and justwomenssports).

Project Overview

Sketching & Player Characterization

The first thing I did before sketching was choose a font and color scheme for the "dawn's daycare" text that I knew I wanted as the center point for this illustration.

After settling on a font and the multicolored "daycare", I began sketching the team. The first idea I had centered around those play basketball hoops for toddlers. I imagined drawing one of the players hanging off the rim, so who better to put in that space than Ashlyn Watkins who is known to dunk.

From there the ideas just began to flow. I just thought about the players roles on the court and personalities off the court and fit those characteristics to some activity or accessory you might find in a daycare.

Illustration Versions & Licensing

In the original design that I posted to my Instagram, I had actually forgotten a player who was on the team but sat out due to injury. After adding her in, this is the illustration that I sent off to the shirt manufacturer in South Carolina (Palmetto Shirt Co.) for licensing and approval.

After sending off the initial design, my contact at Palmetto Shirt Co. requested the addition of the South Carolina Block C logo as well as the words "Gamecock Women's Basketball 2024 National Champions". My image was going through approval with the university, NIL, and NCAA. My contact recommended that taking out the trophy might get it passed faster so these were the two options I sent over. One had plain text and the other had my vision for the text which included the colorful doodle/crayon style text to match the daycare vibes and doodles in the top half of the image.

Licensing through NCAA was a process so it was suggested to have alternate text in case the use of "National Champions" wouldn't be allowed. The recommended text from my contact was "Undefeated Classroom of 2024" to highlight their undefeated season if we weren't able to highlight the National Championship win. I sent over that edit as well as a version I thought would be a bit better with the solo word of "Undefeated!"