Musicologie Mascot

October 10, 2023 by Cedric

Musicologie is a music school headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. They hired me to design a fun cartoon mascot inspired by the bird in their existing logo:

I started with some VERY rough thumbnail doodles, messing around with a bunch of shapes and proportions. Some turned out better than others but that’s how every creative process starts:

The client asked me to stay closer to the shape and proportions of the bird in their logo. I did another round of exploratory thumbnails, this time adding color:

The client really liked the body shape in “PP”. However, with the big head + tiny pointed tail + upside-down tear drop shaped body + the shade of blue, I felt it was starting to feel a lot like a cartoon version of the Twitter logo. Which would look derivative. Also, Twitter has a negative brand association in some people’s minds. Many think of it as a place for arguments and fights and ranting. So I tried adding some stylization to the wings and feathers to help differentiate it from the Twitter bird:

The client liked PP2 but asked me to try exploring more options for the eyes:

Here’s the final design, rendered as vector art:

Learn how a mascot can benefit your business:

The Power of a Mascot

Sketchbook Update: Old Mafia Hit Man

March 20, 2015 by Cedric

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I decided to join in on the Character Design Challenge over on Facebook. This month’s theme is “Gangster”. I thought it would be fun to imagine an old hit man who still wears out of fashion turn-of-the-century clothes. The costume was inspired by this photo: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/390405861423365659/

You can join the Character Design Challenge here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/CharacterDesignChallenge/

VeggieTales ‘Noah’ Concepts

March 13, 2015 by Cedric

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The latest VeggieTales DVD “Noah’s Ark” (Amazon link) recently hit store shelves. It’s the first DVD to feature the updated character designs which coincide with the brand new Netflix series “VeggieTales In The House“. It’s a fresh, energetic new take on the characters. (EDIT: Credit for the new designs goes mostly to the amazing Elena and Olivia Ceballos).

I was asked to help with designing some costumes (sometimes from scratch, other times polishing existing designs). I also did a lot of concepts for a new character, Shem, who was ultimately voiced by Wayne Brady. At the beginning of the “Noah” project we were still using the old, classic VeggieTales style but eventually the decision was made to try and match the updated look of the “refresh”. The final Shem design is pretty close to one of my concepts.

The evolution of this story also took some twists and turns. At first they wanted to go with a traditional biblical setting, then a few other things were tried before eventually settling on something more modern. Hence, the variety of costume designs below:

VeggieTales Noah Rough Concepts