At the end of the year 2014, the founder of (IS) Creatives Agency, approached me through Facebook and asked me to collaborate with him on an exciting project happening in Semarang. A new fancy restaurant was about to open and (IS) Creatives was trusted with the branding. As part of the branding, (IS) Creatives needed an illustrator to achieve the thoughtful concept that they had in mind.

GOODFELLAS Bar & Resto is a new classic french-american brasserie and bar located in Gajahmungkur Selatan No. 11, Semarang, Indonesia. The branding, together with the illustration, was to reflect the theme of classy mafia. All of the branding sets had been done by (IS) Creatives, so my job was only to do the illustration. The style of the illustration is hand-drawing, rough/sketchy, surreal-fantasy approach, mature. The illustration would be placed on Food Menu, Beverage Menu, Invitation, and other materials related to branding essentials.

Food and beverage menu icons :

For illustrations on the menu, I applied the juxtaposition for each artwork (e.g : burger + grenade).

Here are the final artworks for the menu :

Final "Hands" artworks for the promotional materials and placemat :

How the artworks are used in the restaurant placemat :

Oh, and the "Hands" are used on their website too (link : www.goodfellasresto.com).

How the artworks are used in the restaurant menu :

How the illustrations are applied on the name cards :

Before we begin with the project, I had to propose one illustration showing the style we want to achieve. So, I proposed this illustration. The explanation is in Bahasa Indonesia :

The client loved it. However, the illustration was still too dark and scary for a restaurant branding. They got the point. Imagining myself ate a steak while looking at this picture wouldn't be that pleasant too.

We started with brainstorming and collecting references. Everything was about surrealism and cross-hatching drawing. We also aimed for realistic object rather than cartoon-ish look.

When I browsed through the references, it reminded me of a module I learned back on university, which is Juxtaposition. Juxtaposition : the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effects (in short, just fused two different objects into one object).

Then we also looked for some references of mafia's stuffs, like guns, face, clothes, A movie that inspired us the most was "Godfather" which content was very rich in mafia lifestyle.

We came to the interesting part : brainstorming! and of course, sketches! We met up every week to discuss what I should draw and what objects could be juxtaposed to suit the theme. I also did some mind-mapping to help producing out-of-the-box ideas. Here are some documentation of both my pencil and digital sketches (click to enlarge) :

Sketches were done. Then, I went on with experiments of the style. I downloaded custom Photoshop brushes to make it as realistic as a traditional pencil work. I chose to work everything on digital because it is easier for me to edit the illustrations if the clients want some changes. For me, traditional is not really friendly for fast editing. Once I finished looking for some cross-hatching references, I started to draw. Then, I proposed variation of hatching style for clients to choose.

When the idea were ready and style experiment was successful, I finally worked on the finished artwork. It was really challenging for me at first, especially working on the cross-hatching part, I drew one single image in hours! But eventually they got easier once I got used to it.