WEDNESDAY M&M’s

Concept Work/School Project
Illustration, Packaging Design

A (fictional) special edition purple M&M’s release promoting the release of Tim Burton’s Addams Family spin-off, “Wednesday.”

My digital illustration 2 class tasked us with designing food packaging for a snack, and were provided some cut-and-fold templates in different shapes. I was on a black & purple goth kick because I was simultaneously making my Summer Tape merch collection, so when I saw a coffin-shaped box template, I went down a rabbit hole of coffin ideas. I synthesized promotional imagery for Wednesday with a hand-painted-animation I found of a russian folk tale about a flying coffin, rendered in an old-school-Disney-animation illustration style.

Process

Brainstorm

First, I brainstormed a list of “snack pack” ideas, then took my favorites and compiled them in a pdf with a small paragraph and some imagery to get the gyst of each one.

Exploring 4 Ideas with Moodboards

The top 4 ideas got a little more visual moodboarding. I still think the Heart Shaped Box idea would’ve been rad, but the Wednesday Addams M&Ms idea landed harder.

Sketches & Dielines

In this round, I did some thumbnail sketches for layout and composition, and a practice run on cutting and folding the die line for the box (which helped a lot later on when I needed to remember which direction was which on each panel).

Visual References

At some point I had come across this amazing animation of an old Russian folk tale/children’s store about a sentient flying coffin that comes after little children (terrifying). It seems to have been wiped off the face of the internet or I would credit it here. As I saw it I knew that that, with some purple and pigtails, it was exactly the illustration style I was going for—it reminded me of classic Disney animation with hand painted backgrounds.

Illustration Process

As you can see below, I used the promo photo of Jenna Ortega as Wednesday as the basis for my illustration, fleshed it out into a full-body shot, and referenced the Russian children’s story for the final illustration, using a combination of solid color fields and brushstroked background.

Typography

I dipped into classic typography from Tim Burton’s most iconic films, landing on a Nightmare Before Christmas knock off font which I then customized. (For the back panel I basically copied the back of a bag of M&M’s and fit it into the coffin shape.)