Client:

class project

About this project

This infographic tells you what your cats are trying to say by using their body language. It’s a project done for a class. The cat figures are inspired by a Japanese mobile game Neko Atsume(marked in ‘reference’ in the graph).

Being a cat person, when asked to design an infographic that explains the various aspects of a subject, I immediately thought of cat language, which I had studied before. I hope this infographic can help cat owners to understand their cats better.

Challenge

It’s hard to present cats’ body gestures in a cartoonic style which I want, especially some gestures only vary slightly but will mean different things.

I felt frustrated at first to connect all the small pieces of cat figures and make them into a unified infographic. Also, some treatments were needed to give this piece an organized ‘flow’ and tell the reader in which direction to keep reading.

Scattered pieces need to be organized, but at the same time not over organized. The should keep the playfulness and the random nature of cats’ body language.

Solutions

I did a lot of research and finally decided to take the art style from a Japanese mobile game Neko Atsume because there’s not enough time for me to design a completely new cartoon character. I’ll not use this infographic for any commercial purpose so it’s fine.

I used my cat as a ‘model’, taking hundreds of pictures of him and finally simplify the gestures, emphasizing the most important feature.

I designed a cat tree as the background to bring scattered pieces together and organize the content better.

The result

I enjoyed the process of making this infographic and I was really happy with what came out. The cat tree idea worked out and the overall piece has the sense of joy I want. The infographic was used as a sample in my professor’s later classes.

Capabilities involved

Adobe Illustrator, drawing, scientific research