Nov 2024: Matcha Theme Postcard Design {Process Post}

Good day, I am working on my backlog of previous themes writeups that I didn't have time to post last year! First up is Matcha. This one is an interesting study of what happens if I change ideas when I am almost done designing!

When I started working on Matcha after Spider Lily, I already have an idea of a Tanuki girl idea who is bright and mischievous in personality. I wanted her to be coffee theme because I love the idea of the blends of milk and creamy brown colors mixed together. I thought of it will be a good idea to expand on the Latte universe of different cafe beverages at the same time!

A few weeks later, I am done and I am satisfied and I proudly showed my friends the theme. They told me an earth shattering revelation. A cappuccino is not a latte! They are different things! The creamy white and brown hues I love is..... is.. THE COLOR OF A LATTE! But I already did a Latte theme so what am I going to do?! The design is already done at this point and I only have a few days to fix it.

Then I suddenly thought, well, I haven't done matcha latte yet! While I was drawing her, I was already struggling to add more colors to it. I do love the creamy browns and whites of the color scheme but her design still feels really flat with the one single green leaf. By changing the theme to matcha latte, I can salvage the design, expand on more details, add some color. I do not want to make her a "fix" design but instead, I still want her to feel like her "own design" without shoehorning details.

How does one add matcha to a latte in a few steps?

Well, naturally add more green. I add small touches of green to her outfit where it doesn't feel too forced in and also added in a nice cup of matcha latte to the picture frame to call back to the theme idea.

For the sticker, I redrew most of the steps on brewing matcha and also add more touches of green. I think the addition of green really brightens up the design a lot! Her hair color and overall outfit still remains really creamy browns and whites because it calls back to her original tanuki nature. I feel that adding more green will make the design feel forced. With this, I manage to dodge an almost repeat theme and improve on my design. In the future, I told myself to research my topics more haha. I have been mixing up cappuccino and lattes for the longest time without thinking about it and that month, I learned something new! ; w; /

I attached GIFs of the before and after so you can see what I did to update the design from a Latte design to a Matcha Latte design!

I hope you like this lil theme writeup. I am working on catching up to my other missing themes so Spider Lily should be next. Have a good rest of the weekend!