Back in 2003 my family and I immigrated to the U.S.A. from El Salvador. It was a difficult transition as anyone could imagine and very few things were familiar to us because of the cultural difference. One of the things that brought me and my younger sister comfort was the Sailor Moon series.

My icons are dedicated to this series and how much joy it has brought me. While I wanted to appreciate these characters & and the very specific style the anime is known for, I knew needed to make it my own. You will see that I changed some of the features of these well known characters.

When I first started sketching the ideas for each icon I played with shapes a ton and I kept sketching the same things over and over to use as a guide later in illustrator. I also picked the color scheme during this process which saved me a lot of time on deciding what colors I should use while making the icons.

For my first draft I got some good feedback from Brother Kerr, specifically on Serena's hair. It was looking like ramen noodles or spaghetti pasta, instead of hair. He shared that hair goes has movement and that it doesn't all lay in one direction. I tried my best to apply what he said by making the strokes bigger and having the hair lay in a more natural way.

For the other half of my icons I was trying to decide what route I should take; whether to make all the characters from the series or make objects that represented certain moments in the series and certain characters. I stuck with making Serena (Sailor Moon), Damon (Tuxedo Mask), and Luna & Artemis (the cats) as the only characters and then building items from the series.

I felt so many different feelings while making these icons. I was so frustrated so many times because I am not a natural illustrator artist but I learned when you get things right it's the most gratifying feeling in the world! Especially after trying to get specific action on illustrator, and once you figure out how to do it really pays off!

Luna and Artemis are suppose to have human like features and so I tried my best to make their eyes look human without making them look creepy (you can see they were kind of scary looking in my first draft).

My final draft consists of the four iconic characters and some of the iconic items we see through the series. I redesigned many of them to look more square since I decided to make all the characters faces minecraft shaped heads (square). There was definitely a challenge in seeing what I could change into a square without going too far away from the integrity of the series!

I'm really proud of the icons I made, I didn't want them to look realistic. I wanted someone to look at the icons and know that it was Sailor Moon. I also for those who know the series really well to recognize distinct differences within the icons. I wanted things to be more square while still keeping the aesthetic of Sailor Moon. Overall, it was super fulfilling to see the end product of all my icons!