developing a brand character

Whilst the majority of the creative work I’ve done for Moshi involves websites, branding and graphic design for print, occasionally something comes along that really ignites the playful creativity I had as a kid.

Gutter Heros have been undergoing an evolution of their brand during the past year. I’ve been involved with their brand since its inception and have enjoyed the new direction and changes that have happened since. Their initial brand was completed before Hollywood went Comic Book Movie Crazy.

It was a fun and playful brand and the original cartoon character I’d developed was fun but a little out of touch with today’s trend in comic book iconography. Styling from the flintstones, jetsons and ghostbusters helped to influence the style of this character. The result was a fun and friendly character. Fast forward a few years to the present day and the new character is one that is more influenced by the athletic prowess seen on the big screen. It’s also closer to being proportionally correct vs its predecessor. It also shows a greater level of shading so that it’s not such a flat 2D image.

The process to developing such a character doesn’t just happen and in this case it took a few early sketches to nail the right kind of character to truly support the rest of the brand work taking place.

Stage 1 – good old fashioned pencil and paper

It was a fun and playful brand and the original cartoon character I’d developed was fun but a little out of touch with today’s trend in comic book iconography. Styling from the flintstones, jetsons and ghostbusters helped to influence the style of this character. The result was a fun and friendly character. Fast forward a few years to the present day and the new character is one that is more influenced by the athletic prowess seen on the big screen. It’s also closer to being proportionally correct vs its predecessor. It also shows a greater level of shading so that it’s not such a flat 2D image.

The process to developing such a character doesn’t just happen and in this case it took a few early sketches to nail the right kind of character to truly support the rest of the brand work taking place.

Stage 2 – Simple colouring to bring the character to life

For those interested this is the process I follow;

• Photograph/scan in the original sketches then open the artwork in Photoshop
• Clean up the lines and remove any excess or dirty marks from the original pencil sketches.
• Make the permanent lines a little darker by altering the light balance of the image (increasing highlights and shadows).
• From here bring this onto a new layer and ensure we apply the “multiply” style to the layer (this ensure the colour white or tones there-of become transparent).
• Then simply add layers beneath for each section of the image.

I keep my initial colouring simple, just one block of colour per element, no shading or tones. This helps support the concept and the colour palette I’m looking to use at the final process. This itself makes for an effective style of character and I have stopped here for clients as this style has really worked for what they’re after.

On presenting these two characters to the client I was excited for the feedback. At some point in your career (and I’m sure all creatives have experienced it) the client wasn’t sold. They felt the style was wrong or proportionally not what they wanted. Through further discussion and consideration of the trend seen in Hollywood it was back to the drawing board (literally in this case) to come up with a new character.

Stage 1 revisited with clearer direction

I sketched up 3 new examples based on the feedback, all a little more proportionally accurate and with less going on in terms of elements on them. More an outfit and a figure. All with a unique look but being influenced by existing characters at the same time. From the 3 options above the client loved number 3.

Stage 3 – The finished product

Having gone through stage 2 with the selection it was then onto building the final character. For this I simply imported the rough flat colour version into Illustrator where I got to work on building up each element. The advantages of using Illustrator is that it creates a vector image which can be increased massively without losing any quality. You could in theory scale this up to fit on a build and each element would retain a clean and crisp look.

To start with I build the base elements in block colours so that it very closely resembles the rough colour concept. Once complete I then start applying highlights and shadows. I stopped with one of each for this concept, but you could always add additional levels to create a greater sense of realism or depth. The end result is a strong and unique character with a dynamic pose that looks as though he has just jumped out of an existing comic book. It’s certainly evolved their brand in a way which is far more relevant to current trends.

Give your brand something unique

If your business allows for it, developing a character / mascot can assist in engaging your audience in a different way. Such characters are bold and strong and allow for transfer of existing branded colours/icons as well. Contact us today if it’s something you could see working for your business!

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