Even before the 3×3 assignment was issued for the summer holidays, I was already doing design training and related drawing exercises. So after the assignment was sent out, I pulled out a few of my practice pieces to try out how to incorporate the symbols into the design. And trained in carving at the same time, but for me, the training never quite got to where I wanted it to be and it didn’t work as a proper design to apply to the piece. So I didn’t end up using these options.

My earliest idea was to create character designs purely in symbols, so for the initial version I drew this one design pictured below. However, because there was no mature crop design to support it, it made the whole design look very strange and unfocused. I couldn’t compare the design of the symbols with fashion, so I gave up on this version in the end. But it still gave me an idea of how to add symbols to the design to make the character more special.

These three designs were the better ones I picked out of the subsequent exercises, and all the subsequent character design proposals revolved around these three, and in the end I chose one of them to translate into the final product.