By Dan TrenknerYou may be familiar with our previous post about How to Create a Logo in less than a week. We thought it was time for a follow up with a little twist.
We were recently asked by our client ValoreBooks to create a graphic for their company mascot, Victor. Victor is a Beaver that goes nationwide spreading the word and helping students save money on textbooks. The goal of the graphic was to represent the personality of Victor and be smart, savvy, reliable, generous and fun.
Victor the Beaver with Legendary Joe Paterno
To begin the graphic I started with a rough wireframe to establish the shape. Since the only previous version of Victor was a human in a beaver suit, the proportions of the graphic needed to be altered from the long-legged human version.
Victor taking shape
Once the wireframe was established I used Illustrator to begin creating the basic shapes that would make up the beaver’s head, chest, legs etc… At this point I also began establishing the color palette to match the brand.
Once all of the basic shapes and colors where established and arranged in layers, I started adding some detail to bring the beaver to life. Slight gradients and drop shadows were used throughout to give Victor some depth. The final step was creating the hard shadows that would double as Victor’s fur. Voila, Victor was born!
The finishing touches
See a live version of Victor on the Valore website or on their Facebook page.
Comments 1
Interesting post. It’s good to know the process of designing a mascot. I recently got a character design at http://www.mascotdesigncorner.com and the process was relatively simple. I just had to voice out my ideas and the direction I want the design to head and the design team managed to come up with something amazing especially for the price I paid. I was extremely pleased by the mascot design, my colleagues felt the same as well. I guess it definitely involved some hard work in conceptualizing a mascot design as seen from your post. Thanks for posting this again.
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