Design: SEB

I am a Sebastian Vettel fan. Always have been, always will be. Whether he’s winning races or even championships, or not. As Sebastian “Seb” Vettel grows older, he’s also growing more mature. He was always famous for his work ethic off the track. Especially this year, now that the pressure of being a Ferrari driver is no longer on his shoulders.

Seb has become very vocal about the environment. And not just with words, but also in his actions. Whether he’s picking up trash after the British GP, opening a bee hotel, or driving with a specially designed helmet design to create attention to plastic waste in our oceans: Seb has become a man on a mission. Something I greatly admire of him.

This character development into an environmental spokesperson made me think of him as the leader of a political movement. Which, in turn, made me think of campaign posters. And to me, the most iconic campaign poster is Obama’s “HOPE” poster by Shepard Fairey. To pay tribute to Seb’s efforts, I decided to make a similar poster – but with Sebastian as the subject.

The Design Process

I based my illustration on a picture from his Aston Martin Cognizant F1 team, pictured below.

I added some extra shading to the picture (below, left). Then, I applied a photoshop filter (“cutout”) to create the outlines I needed (below, right).

I loaded the filtered picture in my illustrating software and started hand-drawing the shapes the cutout had created. It didn’t take long before the face already took shape.

It took many hours of painstakingly setting anchor points, repositioning handles, placing halftones, adding anchor points, removing anchor points and doing it all over again to get the final product.

However, I wasn’t done yet. I also made a differently coloured version, based on Aston Martin’s green and pink livery design. Both of which you can view below!

I also made a little animation showing the build-up of the layers, which you can view here.

Redbubble

The above designs are also available on my Redbubble-storefront. Click the links below to get to their respective pages, or view some previews below. Clicking the picture will get you straight to the product!

Feedback

Let me know what you think in the comments below. If you’d rather see it in a different colour, I might be able to make a variant (and upload it to Redbubble). If you want to know more about the quality of Redbubble’s products, I bought and reviewed a previous design of mine. You can read my experiences here.

Socials

If you want to stay on top of my latest endeavours, you can follow me on twitter and instagram. I also occasionally post video’s on my youtube-channel if I find the time to do so.