Initially, when I was given this assignment I was at a bit of a loss because I was given full creative freedom for what I wanted to do for an icon set.  I began to think of what I was interested in my younger years with cartoons I use to watch as a kid, but after doing some sketches I realized that my cartoon Icon set would have a very narrow audience and it would be hard to make the characters recognizable.

After literally going back to the drawing board, I thought of my younger self in high school. Video games were also a big part of my childhood and one in particular took up a lot of my time. Team Fortress 2, made by Valve, put two teams of mercenaries against each other to fight over objectives. Though my audience was still narrow, the in the characters game had much more distinct features to help them be recognizable. 

One of the main reasons I chose not to do the cartoon characters for my icon set is the sketches I had done were too close to the source material. To avoid this with the Team Fortress 2 characters I established some rules. The first was that each character would have the same head shape. I chose to have a rectangle for this shape. The second is that the face would remain consistent for all the characters,  the only exception being the frown changing to a smile to emulate the character's personality better. 

For the rough draft I used Adobe Illustrator to make the Heavy, Medic, Pyro, Spy, Sholdier and Scout from the game. I went for simplicity while focusing on keeping the characters recognizable. I kept the rules I had set in my sketches for all but the Pyro as that character always wears a gas-mask, though the head shape stayed the same. I was very satisfied with how the characters turned out. 

I made few changes to the Pyro in the top left hand corner by turning the head shape upside-down and I touched up the eyes, but the draft largely the same for the final product. The character I added included the Demoman, the Engineer, the Sniper, Saxson Hale, Miss Pauling and the Administrator. The last three of those characters are non-playable characters in the game but are prominent characters in the story of the game. 

I was very happy with the finished product as each character was recognizable, excluding the more obscure lesser known characters at the end. I had a blast making the rest of the characters. The Sniper, third character down on the far right, was my favorite one to work on. 

Overall, this icon set is one that I had a lot of fun with and I feel honored to use Team Fortress 2 as an inspiration.