Hellcats — Unit Coin

Until a few months ago, I had never heard of army unit coins. When I finally did, it was because my cousin, a Captain, requested that I illustrate and design one for her unit.

The short of it is this: army officials will have coins made of their unit, displaying the name, logo, and motto, and hand them out to soldiers who did exemplary work or as a memento of their time working together. They are a beloved token, and are often collected and displayed.

I want to clarify that the work I did was for my cousin — not for the US Army or government in any way.

With that aside, her unit was called the Hellcats. She sent me a reference image and a color palette, and I was on my way.

Initial Sketches

For the sketches, I kept to a monochromatic, grey-scale design, so she could see the different elements with clarity and imagine where the colors might fight in. This assured that we were choosing the best design first and foremost, and dealing with the colors secondly.

From this batch of sketches, I was told that the 9th design was the favorite (far bottom right) of her unit, but the 8th design was her personal favorite (far bottom middle). I decided to move forward with these two designs for the coloring.

Draft 2

Making coins is an expensive undertaking, and it becomes even more expensive with additional colors. Although I loved the divine gold in the 5-color option, I knew it probably wouldn’t be picked. Still, it helped me to start out with as many colors as I wanted and pare back from there.

The three color design was the most cost-effective, though the colors I’d picked were very dark, dull, and hard to read. So it was back to the drawing board to spruce those up!

Draft 3

With this batch, I veered away from the exact colors from the original palette, in favor of brighter, lighter colors. And it was a success! From here, we found our winning coin.

Final

I’m really happy with how this piece turned out, and I can’t wait to see the printed coin! It was such a pleasure to illustrate something so fun and unique. I myself am not a cat person, but I think I captured a fiery cat quite well!