mascot art

University Mascot Character Design

Recently I was commissioned by Turkel Advertising in Miami, Florida to do a character design for Barry University. They needed a redesign for their parrot buccaneer mascot Bucky.

The first step was to draw sketches of numerous different pirate parrots, in Corel Painter using my Wacom Intous 4 tablet, to narrow down the direction we wanted to focus on.

After that was completed, finding the right combination of clothing, hat and what the character was going to be holding in his hands was the next step.

The next step was to create various color comps in Photoshop to get the colors right before going to final art. When we had what the character was going to look like wired, I went to final art and completed Bucky in Adobe Illustrator.

I also created color comps of Bucky for a costume design company to use as a guide in making a mascot costume.

Check out the final art along with 3 of the many ideas created in the process.

Lemme know what ya think.

News update for Fian.com

Been really busy the last few months working on projects that I can't post artwork up yet. One is an art licensing project involving creating character designs and mascot development for a line of children's supplements. They are fantasy characters like a knight, dragon, wizard etc. that will be on the product labels and merchandising. Should be 12-13 characters in all...a super fun project and great client to work with! I will give out more updates and art work sneek peeks (if possible) later as the project progresses. Another art licensing/character development opportunity is with a line of fantasy/sci-fi characters that were created for a trading card strategy game a few years back. My partners, on this business venture, and I are in negotiations right now with a toy/game company working out the details. If all goes well, we will be at Toyfair in Februrary 2012 showcasing the new game. Check out the second to the last image on the mascots portfolio to see some of the characters in the game.

In the meantime, check out the artwork I did not too long ago for a skateboard deck. A real fun piece to do in Adobe Illustrator. Still waiting for my additional samples to come in...don't really want to ride and trash a sample if I don't have one as a backup to use as a wall hanger.

Now back to the drawing board...

 

Character design comparison

Been awile since i posted due to pressing deadlines (what's knew?). Here's a comparison in a character I did for the game Skateboard Madness done digitally and a version I did for kicks the old fashioned way with pencil and watercolor. It felt weird painting with a brush and paint instead of a digital pen, but it also felt like being reunited with an old dear friend. Took awhile to realize there was no undo command when I painted.I will have to keep doing these painting refresher courses up...Waddayathink?