Company Mascot
A company mascot taken from the first sketch to a rigged and rendered 3D character, through months of review by everyone with a stake in it.
- Client
- Nawatech
- Year
- 2024
- Role
- 2D sketch through to final render
- Built with
- Clip Studio Paint · Blender · Substance Painter · Custom Shader
What it is
This project came from a request by one of the marketing people. The idea was that we needed a face to represent the company, especially for every media post we made: YouTube videos, social media feeds, stories and more.
The problem
Before designing I needed to know the company first. At that time I had only worked with the group for about two or three years and barely knew the company as a whole. It did not stop there. What I was about to make had to satisfy a lot of people. I understand that a mascot can carry an emotion and form a connection to the company, and because of that a lot of people took an interest in this mascot development and gave their input. Reading from their reactions, I needed to meet their expectations about how they see the company.
What I did
I took all the responsibility, from the 2D sketch to the 3D model, rigging, animating and the final render. The sketch stage itself took a couple of months, because a lot of people reviewed my design: the owner, the C-level and some of the managers, until eventually we agreed on a single one.
In the end I took the initial design from the mascot of Jejakin, another company in the Nawa group, but its proportions did not work for 3D art. So I redesigned it while considering that the company is not customer-facing but B2B. I kept the reference and made it less outstanding, while keeping the job a mascot has to do.
Once that was done I took it into Blender, made the 3D version of it, textured it, set up the rigging, animated it and then rendered it.
Outcome
Even at the final design I could not satisfy everyone. The reason is that every person has their own perspective on the company, and their own taste about what they like and what they do not.
Still, the mascot is in use now, doing the job it was made for across the company's media posts.