Client Project Pro Forma
- 2. Mind Map
- 3. Mind Map
- 4. Brainstorm Idea 1 I’d like to create something similar to a sports mascot or store mascot but obviously linked to the theme of the comic book shop. The shop itself is called ‘Destination Venus’ which you can obviosity guess the theme of the store is space. To link my mascot and space I could easily create a variety of different designs from aliens and space monsters to spacemen and astronauts and even spaceships and rockets. I think a 4ft carboard cut-out of a personal and unique mascot would look quite good in the store as well as other places such as their website or even on their business cards and promotional items. The good thing about my client is that they’re a single store business and not a chain of stores as it would be more difficult for a larger chain of stores to suddenly add a mascot. Another good use for a mascot would be that it would encourage a younger audience to come and look around the store and increase the daily customers. The store is located inside a cinema in my local town of Harrogate so there is a lot of local traffic coming through the site, a mascot would hopefully encourage the cinema customers to come and look around the store too.
- 5. Brainstorm Idea 2 My second potential Idea would be to create the store new promotional material such as posters, business cards and possibly even carrier bags. This would be a great way to get information out about the store especially around the local towns and customers as its fairly unknown by many of the local towns people. The promotional material such as posters could also be shared on their website and social media further expanding on the reach of the advertisements. Yet again I would stick to the theme of the store and store name which is space so I would make the business cards in the shape of their existing logo which is a UFO and for posters I could also link in a mascot from my first idea which would further indicate the theme of the store being space and comic books. Idea 3 My third idea would be to completely re-design their social media sites and website as its quite outdated and could use a make over. Yet again I would still to the space and comic book theme by using assets associated to space such aliens, stars, planets and astronauts. This would hopefully entice people to come visit their store and hopefully boost sales. I yet again could take inspiration from my first idea and make a mascot which would be used on the website and social media sites.
- 6. Idea Development Final Idea Developed For my final idea I have decided to go along with my first Idea. My first idea was to make a mascot and thinking about it, a mascot could be used in a variety of different ways. For example, the mascot could be used on all promotional material such as posters, leaflets, booklets and business cards, all their social websites such as Facebook, Twitter and their own website if they wanted further down the line, the store could even decided to animate the mascot themselves or hire me again to do it if they ever needed a short clip of animation for any of their potential business ideas in the future. Personally I think a 4ft or even 5ft cardboard cut out of an actual personal mascot would look exceptionally well in the store like I mentioned in my first idea. For the design on the mascot I like the idea of either an alien or an astronaut as that would fit the theme of the store as well as the décor of the store. The colours would be simple as not to distance itself from the rest of the shops colours and design as I plan to use shaded down versions of blues, red and greys. I would mostly be using illustrator to do the work as I learnt this software in year one and I’d like to further develop my skills with the software. I also chose this software as I believe photoshop doesn’t have the correct tools for the job.
- 7. Colour Scheme Colour is an important part when it comes to my client project as I want the colours to represent the store and its name. my clients store has a lot of colours such as blues, creams and browns as well as purples. However, the colours are all dark and shaded down versions of those colours so that’s the colours I tried to match to make it look similar to the store. As for the mascot itself I decided to try to make it stand out in the store so I though that using traditional astronaut colours such as you see in the moves would work well when it comes to actually make you mascots. The colours I have chosen to use for white, a softer red and blue as well as a skin colour. For the other aspects of my client project I intend to use the darker and more dull colours for such things as maybe an updated logo and other assets the client has asked me to produce.
- 8. Style For the style of the mascots, I was inspired by the vault boy from the Fall Out video game franchise as well as a few other aspects from other pop culture references. The cartoon ‘The Jetsons’ from the 1960’s and 1980’s was another huge inspiration to me as I believe the futuristic theme from the cartoon would translate to a modern day comic book mascot. The shape of the characters faces and hair look really good and I will defiantly be using this as inspiration in my production. Another huge design inspiration I shall be using to inspire my mascot creations comes from the Fleischer studios who created characters such as ‘Betty Boop’, ‘Popeye the Sailor man’ and ‘Bimbo the Dog’. All these animation and design styles are quite minimalistic and retro which I think would go great will the décor of the shop as well as the theme. The colours are all so simple yet bright and eye catching which would be a great think for a mascot as it would grab the attention of the audience and hopefully entice the audience to enter and look around. My personal goal however is to hopefully boost their sales in the long run as well as increasing the amount of traffic and people who’re coming to their small and nifty comic book shop and I personally think a mascot would be a great way to do this.
- 9. Developed Idea For the design of the character after looking at my style sheet and drawing a few ideas I have decided to use three pieces of iconic art/cartoons to inspire my work. These three pieces of inspiration are: The Jetsons (Elroy), Bimbo the dog (Fleischer Studios) and the eyes of Mickey Mouse (Disney) as well as the eyes from Fleischer Studios. I think the body style and posture as well as the position of his hat, clothes and jetpack would work really well if were to use it as inspiration for an astronaut or alien. The eyes from classic mickey as well as Fleischer Studios would add to the nostalgic feel to the mascot as well as suit the store with the shop selling comic books. There are a few other things I have taken into consideration when it come to the creation of my mascot. I'm undecided wither or not I should add gloves as hands were to hard to animate and all classic animations and comic characters wear gloves however I don’t want to take too much from outsider inspiration. For the colour I shall be taking the Jetsons approach and stick to a very simple colour scheme with five or fewer colours without and detailed pieces.
- 10. Production Schedule Week/Day Monday Wednesday Thursday Week 1 On the first day of production I intend to gather all the information I require on the business I am working for such as their address, logo, colour scheme and number. I may include this information in my project however I know I will use their current logo in the mascot design to make it look and feel more personal for the client. On the second day of production I intend to start working on one of the mascots first. I shall be doing this by first drawing a variation of astronauts and select the parts I think are the best from each design. After selecting the best parts of the individual drawing I shall make a quick outline of what I want the final thing to look like on paper. After drawing the final outline I shall move over to Adobe Illustrator and begin drawing the outline on there. My skills aren’t as great on Illustrator as they are on photoshop as I learnt Illustrator all on my own so I may need to use the first hour or so to research and remember how to use all the tools correctly and make sure everything is correct. Week 2 On the second week of production I shall continue what I started last week and continue drawing the outline of the mascot on Illustrator. After choosing the colours I intend to use of the outline is finished I shall install something called swatches. Swatches are named colours, tints, gradients, and patterns. The swatches associated with a document appear in the Swatches panel. This basically allows me to use the colour schemes I selected earlier in my pre production without having to manually enter them in. On day two of week two I shall start to colour in the outline I created until I’m happy with the colours how it looks semi- complete. After completing the base colour I shall add additional shading and other smaller details to make it look even better and more professional. After doing all this hopefully the mascot will be complete. I shall then save and export the final piece into a variety of file sizes to make sure if the client wants small or large versions without stretching the original that they’re covered. On the last day of week two I shall basically continue what I did on the second day of week one and draw another mascot In the same way however, this time I intend to make it an alien as to match the whole space theme of the shop as the comic book store is called destination Venus which is why I created an astronaut for the first mascot. Week 3 I shall them continue the same as I did for the first mascot but this time for the alien mascot and start by drawing the outline in adobe illustrator. Once I’m finished with drawing the outline of the alien I shall add the same amount of details to the outline first by adding the base colour then adding the shading and finally by adding any small detail I may have missed the first time around. Once this is done I shall also save this in a variety of files sizes for my client. If everything goes to plan I shall have finished the first two mascots and if I have time left the client asked if I could use their original logo but spice it up a bit and make it more interesting so I shall being drawing on paper some basic designs before rushing onto illustrator. Week 4 I decided it would look good If I were to add seasonal versions of the mascots for Christmas, Halloween, etc. this is only if I have time however. Furthermore I shall try adding the original store logo onto the current mascots by making scenes with both the Astronaut and ufo (original logo) together to look like its beaming up. I shall start similar to the way I will start both the mascots by drawing them in paper and then moving over to illustrator to draw the base black and white outline of the updated logo and scenes before moving to adding colour and detail. On the final day of production I shall finish adding the detail to the logo and other things depending on the amount of time I have left. If I don’t have enough time left I shall leave this out and package both the alien and the astronaut mascot files into a folder before sending it to my client for their feedback.