Mughal-Inspired Pattern and Animation by Fatima Salah ud dinMughal-Inspired Pattern and Animation by Fatima Salah ud din

Mughal-Inspired Pattern and Animation

Fatima Salah ud din

Fatima Salah ud din

Mughal Patterns

One-line summary: A hand-painted floral motif, inspired by traditional Mughal inlay art, turned into a repeating surface pattern and applied to a sketchbook mockup with a simple page-flip animation.

Overview

This personal project started as a single hand-painted floral motif, inspired by the ornamental inlay work seen in Mughal architecture (the kind of scrollwork and stylized tulip forms found in pietra dura panels). From that one painting, I built out a full surface pattern and applied it across a realistic sketchbook mockup, then animated the pages turning to show the pattern in a more tactile, presentation-ready way. The pattern itself is well suited to real-world applications like stationery, textiles, gift packaging, or wallpaper.

My Role

Surface Pattern Designer & Illustrator — I hand-painted the original motif, built the repeating pattern and mockup composition in Photoshop, and animated the page-turn sequence using Photoshop's timeline.

The Brief

Self-directed: take a single piece of hand-painted artwork and push it into a full, presentable surface pattern collection — motif, standalone piece, and repeat pattern — shown in a real-world application rather than just as flat artwork.

Process

Original painting: I hand-painted the central floral motif in gouache, drawing on the ornamental language of Mughal-era inlay and manuscript decoration — scrolling vines, stylized tulips, and a warm palette of red, orange, and green.
Building the pattern: Rather than vectorizing the artwork, I worked directly with the painted image, which already had a clean white background. I built the repeat by layering and multiplying the motif in Photoshop, keeping the hand-painted texture intact instead of flattening it into a rigid vector pattern.
Mockup presentation: I applied the finished pattern and standalone motif to a realistic open-sketchbook mockup, pairing a full pattern spread with a page showing the motif on its own, framed and signed like a finished piece.
Animation: To make the presentation feel more alive, I animated a simple page-turn sequence in Photoshop's timeline, so the pattern and motif pages transition into one another.

Deliverables

Hand-painted floral motif (standalone) — lead image: use a clean, flat shot of the original gouache painting here, not the mockup
Repeating surface pattern — suitable for stationery, textile, or packaging applications
Sketchbook mockup composition (multiple spreads)
Short page-turn animation

Skills & Tools

Gouache Painting · Photoshop · Surface Pattern Design · Mockup Presentation · Simple Frame-Based Animation
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Posted Jul 30, 2026

Created a repeating Mughal-inspired pattern and animated sketchbook mockup.