Graphic Design
3D Animation is a category that I have been fortunate enough to be educated for however Graphic Designing was always something that I always enjoyed as well and something I could utilize in my own work but since I only have limited knowledge of the practice, I hoped to find any opportunities that allows me to improve what I can do.
That wouldn’t mean I would stop and wait to find it. While I wait to start my career as a designer, I spent my time creating a concept brand inspired by celebrations made around the world.
Concept Festivals
There are countless events celebrated around the world Christmas, Halloween, Valentines Day which are all the most common and well celebrated over the years.
However there are many interesting celebrations around the world that has been left unsung which inspired me to create a concept festival. My goal is to spread the word of events and celebrations to those who are unaware.
Festivals are great to spread the word about the theme containing stalls for fun activities and games, exclusive product sales and entertainments. It’s a good way to enjoy with friends and families, attendees will have numerous opportunities to post any content from the festival on their social media which would be great for publicity.
The first celebration I wanted to experiment with this concept is National Strawberry Ice Cream Day, celebrated on January 15th. A fun concept using pastel colors and fun shapes to attract audiences through all age. I thought about using a celebration where majority of the general audiences finds familiar and starting off going basic is good for me to dip my hands in the world of Graphic Designing.
​
Description
​
During James Madison's second inauguration in 1813, strawberry ice cream was served. It's also one of the three flavors found in Neapolitan ice cream along with vanilla and chocolate. Other variations of strawberry ice cream include strawberry cheesecake ice cream and strawberry ripple ice cream. Holidays are best celebrated with someone else, so be sure to grab a bowl or two. Invite someone to join you while you enjoy a dish of strawberry ice cream. Strawberries tend to remind us of summer, too. So imagine the things you'll do when the days are warmer.
Objectives
​
Create exposure by organizing a festival containing branding merchandise with eye opening graphics. Inspired by Sanrio and their marketing strategy, create a mascot based on the celebration for more options for branding. Social Media is the most powerful tool that can be use, so create an animated video including the mascot to promote the event even further.
​
Overall Mood Board
Logo Design
Final Design
Mascot Design
Mood Board
As a kid in Malaysia, I noticed that major utilities companies had a character mascot representing them and they would appear animated on TV commercials, billboard ads and many many more. This was also done in Japan commonly and I thought creating a mascot would be a good idea to make the celebration memorable and it would be good for branding and advertisement.
​
I'm looking for something that is familiar and simple at the same time. The most popular species that I managed to find are bunnies and so I decided to based on a rabbit as the mascot character,
Sketches and Concept
I thought about adding the finalise logo onto to the character to make it consistent, I tried using the same colour palatte as the logo as well.
​
The character's coat replicates the subtle vanilla ice cream colour while adding a couple of strawberry coded coloured accessories and outfit.
3D Rendered
After creating the character and finalizing it, I wanted to make a line of toys using the character to be used for marketing. The idea is that the character will be positioned into different pose for the figure and it will be packaged in a 'blind box' format.
​
I made a 3D rendered of the character so I can create a mockup of all the figure designs and later I'm going to create the packaging for it.
Toy Line
I created a list of mockups for the different figurine that can be collected by buying individual boxes and in typical 'blind box' fashion, I added a secret figurine into the list.
For the name, I named this character 'Caomei' which means strawberry in Chinese. I use a chinese name since the first ice cream originates in China.
​
This format is also going to be used on the packaging.
This is the second prototype of the packaging. The first one that I did, I unfortunately misplaced some of the images and so this is an updated version of that. I added information about the event and tried to incorporated the same colour palette as well.
Promotional Products
Promotional Product Initial Sketches
Graphics Inventory made in Illustrator
Graphics made for Tees
Tees Mockup
Promotional Videos
Going back to my expertise on using After Effects for puppet animation, I'm planning to make an animated promotional video starring Caomei as the main character.
Caomei made in Illustrator
Caomei Motion Test
