One Yagoo Banknote (Commemorative Edition)

Description:

Continuing with my previous work on currency design, this piece is the first in a series featuring the people of Hololive Production. This first addition is a commemorative note featuring the founder and CEO of Cover Corp, Tanigo Motoaki, well know in the Hololive fandom, Yagoo, as he is known in group, is often featured in artwork and other culture pieces surrounding Hololive. This is just my addition to the ever-accumulating zeitgeist that orbits him.

Idea:

The idea of creating this new series of banknotes came from an interest in trying to integrate faces and portraits into currency design. Moreover, I’ve been seeking to further my abilities in graphic design, with a further focus on small details like the usage of small images and icons in the bill. A substantial amount of time had also passed since I last tackled a banknote design, getting into Hololive and Vtubers recently provided a very fun and interesting outlet to try making money designs again. When I started thinking about banknotes for Hololive, it was a foregone conclusion that the very first one had to feature the creator himself.

Process:

The process began with creating a rough layout on how I wanted the paper currency to look. This was done as a very rough sketch in Adobe Fresco. From there, I focused on portrait for the bill by taking a pre-existing photo of Yagoo, and translating it to a style that resembled engraved printing found in real banknotes. Through the help of some tutorials, this process was done in Photoshop and the results had me quite happy. From there, I moved the image to Illustrator and began building up the note piece by piece, with inspiration coming from modern polymer bills used in numerous countries.

Like with some of the other designs I’ve done, I was interested in creating a design that could viewed at both a horizontal and vertical position. This came in the form of tabs at the ends of the bill that had the denomination oriented different to the rest of the design.

In the details of the design, I was able to imbue references and jokes that were prevalent in the online communities of Hololive. Some of these references came in the form of watermarks or other “security features” in the bill. The more industrious and clever-minded might be able to figure out what some of them might mean.