CASE STUDY 2: Mascot design for LORDBLING

THE CHALLENGE

Some months ago We was contacted by guys at Lordbling to do a mascot design to brand his website. This is a hughe site plenty of sections: games, videos, animations, forums where every user is able to submit content... so Daniel thought was a good idea having his character customized for every section:

'The Lord Bling mascot gives life to an otherwise dull web  experience. Unless their is some character or mascot the users can  relate to, the return percentage for visitors falls well below the  15% mark. Major sport teams have mascots who support the players on  the field. In the same way the mascots created for Lord Bling support  and enhance the experience a user will have when visiting  LordBling. Sergio and his team has not only meet expectations,  but far exceeded what I had hoped for. I highly recommend them for  all your graphical and mascot needs.

Sincerely
CEO of LordBling'

In this case study we will be focused more on the content than the proccess itself, if you are interested in the way we work you can read more at Steps in the mascot design production.

THE CONCEPT

Our client had a clear idea about his requeriments for his character design, He wanted his mascot design suggesting richness, but with a fresh and fun view... what better than a kid dressed like a Lord?. In orders like this one (a client with a clear idea of his needs and good comunication skills) the process is terribly fast. We bring his ideas to live in just 1 concept. Later we did some small corrections and Lorb Bling was already alive :) .

POSING THE CHARACTER

Any character designer with a good understanding of basic drawing concepts can design a nice cartoon. The challenge starts when He have to develop the same character in different acttidudes, making people feeling like He is alive and his humour changes depending on the circunstances, but keeping his personality consistent along the time. Like Walt Disney used to say, the challenge is creating "thiking characters"... its the difference beetwen a nice cartoon and a cartoon you will fall in love with.

1. Lord Bling Standard: This is the orginal mascot design we used to brand the website.
2. Lord Bling Wachtching tv: This pose was designed for animations section.
3. Lord Bling Treasure chest: When you submit content to the website, the user get credits named "Bling".
4. Lord Bling Cinema director: This design of the mascot was done for videos section.
5. Lord Bling playing arcade: This one is for arcade games section.

CUSTOMIZING THE MASCOT

We already had the designs for the main sections of the site, the next task was doing different versions to show it in every subsection banner, customizing the characters more in deep.

The cartoonist itself is the right person when you need to draw a A4 full color comic cover... but what happens when you need to place that into 60px height?... In this step the graphic designer is the boss. They work together to get the right composition, It is really important because we have to design scenes looking good and clear focusing the action in a really small area. Here you can see some of the banners we designed in the last weeks... more coming soon.