Zainab Hasan
Emotions: L, P, O
zaihasan.com
Concept & Research
Children do not have the vocabulary to express how they’re feeling aside from the five basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness. When children are unable to vocalize how they’re feeling, they often act out their emotions in physical or inappropriate ways.
Research shows that when “kids learn to manage their emotions in childhood, it leads to positive attitudes and behaviors later in life.” After doing two interviews with professionals working with children between the ages of 6-8, our group felt passionate about a topic that could help impact children behavior positively. We spent time discussing both positive and negative emotions. Through brainstorming, we picked the strongest of both and decided to focus on the importance of the emotion and how to deal with it.
L is for Love
Communicating love to children was a challenge because love is powerful, in many different ways. I illustrated the heart character because most people associate love with a heart, though, often a red heart. I wanted to portray love beyond the typical romanticized red heart, which led to my blue colored character. I illustrated the teddy bear and toys because children are most attached to their toys at that age; this was a good opportunity to communicate that love is feeling strongly towards something/someone. For interactive, I wanted to convey that love unites people, and the world.
O is for Overwhelmed
My initial concept for overwhelmed was a lemon character getting squeezed, though after the first round of critique, I received feedback that the concept was not executed as successfully as I had imagined. I then came up with the idea of an egg getting cracked. To add humor to the concept, I decided that carrying many books would be what overwhelms the egg. For interactive, I focused on how to deal with being overwhelmed, and thus, the egg becomes happier after trying healthy habits.
P is for proud
For proud, the little girl is dancing ballet with a big smile on her face because she received a good job badge. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t defining what success is, because each person has different reasons to feel proud. By continuing along the lines of spreading love and kindness, my hope is that children learn to become proud for the littlest of things, such as being kind. For interactive, Aria explains why she is proud of the things she does; further explaining the feeling of proud.
Recap
I really enjoyed going outside my comfort zone and working on illustrations as it is a skill I am hoping to improve at. Moving forward, I’m eager to explore different illustration styles. Working in a group allowed for constant feedback from others, which I deeply appreciated.
Downloadable Assets
You may use the below assets created for this project provided via Figma as long as you give attribution, share your outcomes, and if your use is non-commercial in nature.
