Cartoonist and illustrator, Salisbury Wiltshire
Cartoon and illustration portfolio of Salisbury based cartoonist, Nick Gowman
Mascot design
Dreaming of that perfect cartoon mascot design?
A cartoon mascot design can be a great addition to any brand or business. Not only are they eye-catching and fun, but can also be very branded and merchandised to aid in promoting a product or a service.
A bespoke cartoon mascot design is also memorable and appealing, maybe being the first thing your customers notice when interacting with your business or product for the first time.
Local sports teams, race logos or even a cute character design for your dog walking business – anything is possible!
Coming up with a mascot design
Coming up with character design, whether that be a cartoon mascot or cartoon logo design almost always begins life as a series of sketches and ideas. This helps me come up with ideas and directions for the character and help me to refine the concept.
These are usually in the form of rough pencils to get a feel for the character, their proportions and facial expressions, plus any other traits or dynamics.
From these initial character sketches, a few will usually pop off the page and have a good feeling about them. These are the ones that I’ll refine and maybe try a few directions with before preparing them to share with you.
Developing our custom mascot design
Once we have the character roughs in place, these will be provided to you and we can discuss in more depth.
- How will they be standing?
- Do they have any text to accompany them?
- Are they holding an object or interacting with anything?
- Where will the character be used?
- Will it be placed on a website or the side of a building?
- Can it work on a t-shirt?
- Does it need to be the size of a postage stamp?
Upon reviewing the sketches with you we can see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes the mascot design will work straight away and other times it requires more thought, but this is the fun of the evolutionary process!
Your chosen character design
So now we have a chosen character design, it’s time to go digital! I start by drawing in all of the character outlines in a vector-based software, like Adobe Illustrator. I’ll then add in some suggested base colours for the character.
The reason I create my cartoons and characters as a vector is that they are much crisper and can also be scaled without any loss of clarity vs. bitmap graphics.
At this stage, I may supply the character in a range of colours, if required, for approval. Obvious characters, like a tiger, would most likely be orange and black, but a cartoon dinosaur could be any colour!
Usually one of the final stages of a mascot design is to add some basic shades and highlights, plus any other details. We can also take this opportunity to tidy up any loose bits and pieces.
