Recently I was hired by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to help them pitch an idea for an interactive ad that included a simple animated Renaissance game. Here’s the concept art I worked up. The game needed to fit two different aspect ratios, so which is why there is so much empty space along the top and bottom:
Last summer I was hired to work up some rough FPO comp art ideas for a Christmas catalog for Best Buy. The focus was on home appliances (vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, etc.) Here’s a few of the sketches, done under the art direction of Randall Herrera at Olson in Mineapolis. The empty/ghosted areas were for text to be added.
As a freelance illustrator I work on a variety of projects, but my specialty is character design. I periodically get calls from ad agencies, design firms, and business owners wishing to hire me to design a mascot to help promote their product or service.
Mascots are powerful, which is why so many companies use them (like the well-known brands pictured above). Having a character or mascot to represent you in front of the public can have several advantages:
1. Mascots get attention – People are constantly bombarded with messages so you need to go the extra mile to stand out. Mascots get noticed. When people see a mascot they are more likely to stop and listen to what he/she/it has to say.
2. Increased brand awareness. A good mascot is memorable. If an appealing character can work its way into the public consciousness it will become an instantly recognizable symbol for a product. When you look at the Geico gecko you immediately think of Geico. You see the Pillsbury dough boy and think of gooey chocolate chip cookies. The company logo is barely an afterthought. The mascot says it all.
3. A friendly image. Mascots are fun! They are entertaining to watch and send a positive message. A likable character can instantly create a positive connection with your potential customers. It’s much harder to do that with only a logo.
4. Mass appeal. A good mascot can appeal to a wide demographic, across many age groups and backgrounds. Mascots appeal to children as well as adults, extending your brand message to a wider audience. A mascot can even transcend languages and cultures.
5. Lucrative licensing opportunities. If a mascot becomes popular it opens the door for all sorts of profitable merchandise (clothing, toys, etc.) that can make you money while at the same time raising awareness of your product. Mars Inc., the makers of M&M’s, recently opened an entire M&M’s retail store in New York City, thanks in large part to the popularity of their cartoon mascots.
If you think a cartoon mascot might be the right choice for you or for a client, download a PDF of my character design portfolio to view samples of various characters and mascots I’ve designed. You can also contact me about a free consultation, or download a free questionnaire. It’s designed to help you think through your brand message and also to give me a clear idea of what your needs are so that I know the best way to help you.
Over the past few months I’ve been doing some FPO comp art illustration for CPC Intersect, a Twin Cities marketing firm that specializes in “experience marketing”. They’re a creative bunch and they’ve got a real spirit of fun that they bring to their projects. I’ve been fortunate enough to help them out with pitches to brands such as Coca-Cola, Dasani, and General Mills.
The deadlines are often crazy tight but in advertising that’s par for the course. I specialize in meeting tight deadlines and I enjoy the challenge.
Above are two samples of recent work I’ve done for them.
A few months ago I was hired by Denali Marketing out of Minneapolis to develop some rough comp art to help them pitch a Best Buy ad campaign.
Recently a brand new baseball stadium was built for the Minnesota Twins. Best Buy is a Minnesota-based company so the idea was to come up with a local print campaign to highlight Best Buy’s excitement over the new stadium. The folks at Denali pitched me a few ideas and I worked up some rough sketches to help sell the various concepts.
Here’s a sampling of the sketches I submitted:
As a freelance illustrator I’m often hired by ad agencies and marketing firms to create “comp art” or “marker comps”, which are fast, rough sketches used to pitch an idea to a client. They can be black-and-white or color, depending on the deadline and budget, but they are a lot of fun to do. Because clients are very protective of their ideas I am often asked not to reveal the comp work publicly. But every now and then someone gives me permission to tell the world what we were up to.
Recently I was hired by the Texas-based Launch Agency to help pitch a mascot idea to The Bramton Company, makers of a line of pet waste disposal products called “Bags On Board”. A few months earlier, Launch hired me to help them update the “Bags On Board mascot. Now, they wanted to pitch Bramton with the idea of having someone in a mascot costume hand out fliers and free samples at pet stores around the country.
I whipped up this color sketch to help sell the concept. It was a large, hi-res image done completely in Photoshop.
After some consideration the client ultimately decided against the costume concept. In the world of marketing that kind of thing is not uncommon. In the advertising industry a flurry of ideas come and go every day. It doesn’t make sense to do a highly-polished illustration just to get across the seed of an idea that may never even get off the ground. So the comps I’m asked to do are usually just glorified sketches, though I try to make them look nice enough to make the concept clear and appealing. Either way I still get paid, and I usually have a lot of fun helping out in the process.
