Character and corporate mascot design

Character mascot design

Mascot design is a huge part of my job as an artist, whether it is for advertising, communication and event agencies or for companies and even amusement parks. 

An inspiring mascot can personify a company’s values and benefit your brand’s communication. 

Here are some of the projects I’ve worked on. The fox mascot for Qualiconsult company, the monster mascot for WAW (a south african internet provider), the robot mascot for the Syndicat National de la Publicité Télévisée, a yeti mascot for an ice rink and finally a wolf mascot and its family for the Val Vanoise community of communes. Those were requests from very varied industries that called upon my skills as a mascot character designer to help them accurately communicate to their clients. 

The benefits of a mascot

What benefit can your brand expect from having a mascot ? What types of characters should you choose (human characters, animal characters, object characters, robots, monsters….) ? I’ll try to answer those questions for you. 

A mascot character will portray a message that will benefit your company’s communication. It will help shorten the path to the hearts of clients. You have got to consider the target market (kids, teenagers, adults, men, women) that will help you choose what type of mascot you wanna use. 

If you want a more general appeal to attract a wide range of clients it’s advisable to not create a human character that would prevent customers from identifying with it. 

A character mascot also needs to draw attention and be recognisable. I would advise that it be promoted on various communication supports like flyers, posters, TV spots, social networks or on your own professional website). Here is a mascot that I created and that was used as a wall decoration. 

The mascot design process

The amount of time you spend on your design project will depend on the marketing message you want to deliver, the characteristic references you will use and your target market. Step one is creating initial design concepts of your character. l like to start with three sketches. In evaluating those 3 rough ideas you will be better placed to choose the mascot character that will fit your needs. After a few revisions and once you’re happy with the mascot design proposals, I proceed with colouring.

Personally I like to use vectorised colouring rather than textured colouring because it makes it easier to create small variations of the mascot character but also for the printing. Thanks to that technique one can easily apply your mascott to any medium and you can print as big as desired with no quality loss. The only issue with this technique is that it is more costly.  You could opt for the creation of another technique called 3D mascot but it’s not advisable unless your project is for a TV spot or animation.

Now that you understand my methods, if you need design work please feel free to contact me by phone or email in the contact section of my website. 

The SNCF mascot 

I was asked to design a mascot for the SNCF flash sales promotion and I thought why not create a stopwatch character ? Indeed the SNCF offers its customers regular sales promotions and needed some help to boost their communication. We agreed that the stopwatch was a great idea, as its purpose and message conveyed “hurry up or you’ll run out of time to benefit from this great offer !”

The compass mascot 

I worked for the Prisme Limousin association and designed a mascot that was based on the head of a compass. Prisme Limousin helps young people find their way so we worked on that particular message. I created several variations of the mascot based on different contexts. The mascot is based on vector graphics created in Adobe Illustrator. 

I am a mascot design specialist who offers his services to the general public. I work on posters, brochures, flyers and web communication. 

Faking 3D perspective with a 2D mascot

3D modelling takes a significant amount of time and a 3D character wasn’t suitable for this type of project anyway so I went for a 2D vector character. However I still wanted some 3D perspective so I added some detailed gradients, some lighting touches and shadowing too. Going for a 2 dimensional character is a great way to easily add variation but its biggest advantage is that it saves a lot of time. 

In fact creating a 3D mascot takes twice as much work as to create a 2D one. It requires : a sketch, colouring, 3D modelling, UV mapping, ringing.

Please feel free to take a look at my mascot showcase and contact me if you need my services. 

Why should you call upon me for a character design ? Because I have worked with many different clients each having different needs and I would love putting my knowledge and experience on the table to create the best outcome for your design. I am creative and I like to constantly renew myself to best meet my clients needs. I also have great technical skills and I work fast 

I invite you to take a look at my online portfolio to get an overview of my work.

Client :

RATP
SNCF
Qualiconsul
Ville de Cabourg
Waw télécom
Prisme Limousin
Val Vanoise
SNPTV
Le Yeti

• Communication
• Mascot