Second Year: #3

Another Project from this year we have received a brief from the Royal Australian Mint. They want us to create 2 coins to be produced. One that can be a coin collectors item and another that can be produced for circulation. The idea to be put on the coin was up to us really, it just had to commemorate something or someone significant. I did struggle at first with coming up with some ideas for this assignment. I searched for all historic dates and tried to find something special that happened on a commemorative year such as 50, 100, 150, 200 years ago. Couldn't really find much.

After a LOT of thinking, I chose to tackle the thinking process from a different angle. I then researched thoroughly all the extinct or endangered animals/insects/plants we have in Australia. I found one particular insect that was really liked and was intrigued by. The Tasmanian Stag Beetle, a large beetle that is highly endangered in Tasmania because of trees being cut down. Our coins are supposed to have underlying messages in them, so in this design so far I have created the stag beetle on top of a map of Tasmania, with a wooden texture as they live in trees. Not to sure if i am happy with the final product yet or it has enough story but this is what i have so far:

After that design I was stumped again as to what other subject I could use. I then started thinking about mythical creatures and stories we have in Australia. This led me to the Australian dream time, and the biggest Australian dream time creature was the rainbow serpent. I researched further into this beast. In my design so far I have created as you can see the rainbow serpent going around a map of Australia. In the background I have incorporated an aboriginal pattern. To go even further into detail with the underlying story on this one I have created a little dot (seen in the corner of the image) with smaller dots in it. This has been placed in each section of the snakes back and all equal up to about 200 dots, representing the 200 languages that were spoken by the Indigenous people when the British first settled in Australia. Also incorporated in that first coin design is some rain, as the serpent was said to bring rain also. Here are the rainbow serpent designs so far: