12. Craig's Moon Pies

I have never eaten a Moon Pie, although the name is familiar to me. Additionally, I only just saw this old Moon Pie logo for the first time today after already finishing my own creation. I quite like that I didn't see their logo first, but I also quite like the similarities between them. My first impression of Craig's Moon Pie's was that they looked beautiful, yummy and were glowing with the love and tastiness that only homemade treats can have. The obvious quality of these creations needed somehow to be promoted to the world at large.

Snack Cakes

As a child, two of my favourite snack cakes were made by a company called Hostess. Fluffy, yellow ones called Twinkies and fluffy, chocolaty ones called Ding Dongs. They also had another amusingly named creation called Ho Ho's. I tend to not eat highly processed and packaged things like that anymore as an adult and my waistline is much the better because of it. I am however tempted by the look of Craig's homemade Moon Cakes, which I thought deserved an equally homemade and hand-crafted logo which could be used for advertising and packaging of these lovely treats. It came as a surprising coincidence to me to find out today while preparing this post, that my beloved Hostess Twinkies are no longer made as the Hostess company recently went out of business. What an interesting irony to discover the replacement offering called Cloud Cakes that have been dreamed up by another famous company from my childhood, Little Debbie's. I see that Craig is going to have some tough international competition when it comes time to market his Moon Pies.

Sketchbook

Without much planning or knowing what I wanted to come up, with I just sat down on my train journey and made some rough sketches of ideas. I did have an image in my head of the man in the moon from the famous Lumiere Brothers film from 1902 called "A Trip to the Moon". I loved watching these kinds of old clips on the television as a kid which provided a time-travellers look at the past while at the same time showing a whimsical world of imagination. Within a single train journey I had come up with an idea that I thought would suffice for my final presentation of a whimsical world of wonderful tasty treats.

Photoshop and a Wacom Tablet

After many, many years of thinking "Wouldn't it be fun to have one of those tablets that let you draw and paint on the computer?", I finally bought one last year. It was really my daughter Tabitha's interest in getting one that helped encourage me to finally buy one and indeed it was really bought as her birthday present, although she and I both have always known that I wanted to use it as much as her. So here was a perfect opportunity for a bit of computer painting. I sat down with my electronic pen and proceeded to  recreate and embellish my original sketches. And here is the result.