notes

The head leads of RevUC wanted a panda to represent the event. I immediately began sketching some different cartoon renditions of pandas. The leads eventually wanted the end product to look similar to the panda on the first image on the bottom left: a mascot that looks relatively simple with minimal organic shapes. Once they settled on that design, I transitioned onto a digital workspace through Adobe Illustrator to properly vectorize it.

color choosing process, typeface choice, drafting

I was really playing around with the expressions of the panda. I initially sought inspiration from One Piece's Tony Tony Chopper as he is (unwillingly) the animal mascot of his pirate crew. It was later scrapped when I wanted more softer expressions on the panda that weren't as comedic as Chopper.

I was given a branding sheet/guide by the team leaders (as seen above) as a means to decide the overall composition and visual aesthetics of the mascot. There was continuous back and forth feedback about wanting the mascot to be "more fatter" as you can see above haha!

There was also discussion of making the darker spots of the panda to be a darker gradient color to make it stand out more on the website. While it is not a bad idea, it would not inherently follow the branding guide and would weigh down the cohesiveness of the website. After some convincing, we went back to the original navy blue gradient instead of the aforementioned black gradient.