natalia kiseleva
Dungeons&Dragons Сommunity Badges
Translate into English: For several years now, especially often - during the pandemic - my friends and I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons - this is a very popular type of tabletop role-playing game where you need to invent a character for yourself, and the game master composes the adventure plot and helps players make the game interesting! Also, multi-faceted multi-colored cubes add excitement - on which luck and success (as well as a lot of problems) in your character's life depend.
Since chatting with friends and playing D&D together occupy an important part of my life, D&D often appears in my projects. For example, in Data Ink, one of the datasets is the number of sketches based on our games.
And the drawings themselves have accumulated more than 200. And I hope this is not the limit! I'm collecting them as a keepsake here:
DnD Sketches.
And now the details about D&D badges!
And the drawings themselves have accumulated more than 200. And I hope this is not the limit! I'm collecting them as a keepsake here:
DnD Sketches.
And now the details about D&D badges!
a sketch based on the Curse of Strahd campaign
The process of the project creation
I really enjoy the theme of community badges, so I have created several such projects—one dedicated to the Parent Community and another to our data art community Flowers and Numbers, where I actively promote the practice of creating these badges.
So I launched a survey using Google Forms in my D&D community.
In the survey, I gathered information about the participants' favorite characters and their favorite game genres.
I encoded all the gathered information into badges and compiled them into a poster.
In the detailed legend, I included parameters such as:
So I launched a survey using Google Forms in my D&D community.
In the survey, I gathered information about the participants' favorite characters and their favorite game genres.
I encoded all the gathered information into badges and compiled them into a poster.
In the detailed legend, I included parameters such as:
- Whether the player is a Dungeon Master
- Favorite player class and race
- Favorite alignment (scales: law-chaos and good-evil)
- How many campaigns have been completed and how many characters have been created
- Favorite genre
- What the player enjoys most about D&D
After collecting the data, I determined the number of variables and the number of elements within each variable. Then, I started sketching on paper and settled on a simple geometric shape for the badge with drawn illustrations inside and utility symbols on the outside.
On one hand, this is not a complex cipher, but on the other, it involves a lot of manual work and drawing! For example, each race symbol is a separate creature's face—I drew them by hand to later trace them in a vector editor. Other elements were easier to handle.
On one hand, this is not a complex cipher, but on the other, it involves a lot of manual work and drawing! For example, each race symbol is a separate creature's face—I drew them by hand to later trace them in a vector editor. Other elements were easier to handle.
Sketches
The second stage involved drawing the elements in Figma, a simple and free browser-based vector graphics tool that I usually work with. After uploading the sketch, I started carefully tracing the most complex elements, while creating geometric shapes and small details was easier. To draw the handcuffs (the symbol for the Urban Fantasy genre), I had to upload a photo of handcuffs to the canvas, as I couldn’t draw them accurately with the pen tool without a reference.
Figma
In the same editor, I created the "Mortality from Traffic Accidents" project and several of my other works, so I have become quite proficient with the "pen" tool. Considering that I made my first project on a laptop using a touchpad — without even a mouse — there’s nothing to fear after that.
If you have little experience working with the "pen" tool in Figma or other vector graphics software, I can recommend a video (ru) I made using this project as an example — it explains how to use the pen tool.
If you have little experience working with the "pen" tool in Figma or other vector graphics software, I can recommend a video (ru) I made using this project as an example — it explains how to use the pen tool.
At first I didn't like the color palette, there were a lot of colors, but they weren't bright and didn't match well. Then I consulted with the F&N community, and they told me to just reduce the number of shades. Surprisingly, it worked, and despite the fact that I'm not a designer, it turned out to be a good color combination.
And it was enough just to reduce the number of shades from 57 to 12...
Do not forget about the power of the community!
After all the badges were created, I had the idea to make a poster and t-shirts with this project and individual badges. I haven't implemented it yet, but I used a few mockups to see how it would look!
And it was enough just to reduce the number of shades from 57 to 12...
Do not forget about the power of the community!
After all the badges were created, I had the idea to make a poster and t-shirts with this project and individual badges. I haven't implemented it yet, but I used a few mockups to see how it would look!
My Other Projects
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Climate bracelet!I used the Warming Stripes diagram principle to encode data on global warming in my homeland - in the Arkhangelsk region.Check!
This data art is tangible - I wove it from beads!
2024 -
Diary of EmotionsThe Emotion Diary is a project that combines data from two diaries - the Sketch Calendar and the Emotion Diary - for one month. I decided to overlay these two projects on each other - in one part encoding emotions with color, and in the other leaving sketches.Check!
This way, even on the hardest day, there was something amusing.
2024 -
'Flowers and Figures' Community!At 2024 I created data art community 'Flowers and Figures' and our first project was based on the dataset of group members. We altogether visualized the community's portrait using various methods.Read!
Read more about our Data-art Community!
2024 -
Data badges 'Moms, Folder, and Kids StuffCreated data portraits of moms from the local parenting community based on Kimley Scott's project.Check!
2024
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The Data Ink projectMy new small challenge project.Check!
As part of my practice, I decided to draw small graphic data-arts by hand on personal data.
I draw with a black fountain pen in a cute notebook. -
My travelsIn this project, I gathered my travels over many years. This project, resembling the music of the winds, is done on paper, but in the process, it's a tangible version.Read!
2023 -
Data-art: Mortality caused by road traffic injuryThe theme of this data art is Mortality caused by road traffic injury. In the form of an ornate plant motif, data on deaths from road accidents in different European countries are encrypted, and other features of these countries are also hidden there. Details about the project can be found at the link!Read!
2022
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Data-art "Family tree. The Mezen folk painting"The theme of this data art is my small family tree. Patterns and symbols were taken from the Northern folk painting - Mezen. Each element in this work represents one of the closest family members. For more information about the decryption and description of the work, follow the link!Read!
2020 -
FriendsIn this project, I gathered all my friends throughout my life up to 2020 and depicted them in these curls, trying to enrich the images with data about shared interests, frequency of communication, etc.Check!
One of my first data arts.
2020
I love data art, I study this direction, collect a collection of world projects, and classify them. I host live streams on the topic of data art, where we analyze various interesting directions of data art with guests.
I teach courses on data art, have a Telegram channel on Data Art, and a data art practice group called 'Flowers and Figures'.
Drop by sometime! If you want to learn more about this direction, check out my articles and videos on data art:
Lectures and Workshops
I teach data visualization, dashboard design, data art, and working with data visualization tools (BI products) Power BI, and Tableau. I give lectures and conduct workshops.
I collaborate as a lecturer and trainer with:
- A. Kolokolov Institute of Business Analytics (2019-...).
- Data Visualization Society (2022-2023).
- MSU Moscow State University (2022).
- HSE Higher School of Economics (2022).
- MGPU Moscow City Teacher Training University (2022).
- EU SPb European University at Saint Petersburg (2022).
If you are interested in collaboration or need a personal consultation, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn, Telegram, or by email eolay@inbox.ru.
If you interested in these and my other projects - please subscribe to my page in social networks for regular updates! I'll be glad!
