Scientist Character Design - Empiribox Logo and Illustrated Cartoon Scientist

Mad Scientist - character design

If I asked you to picture a cartoon scientist you would undoubtedly imagine the white coat, big glasses/goggles and some crazy hair of some kind. Add in some bubbling, smoky liquid in a test tube and you've got your typical scientist (mad scientist) character.

This is exactly what the client needed, so who am I to argue with tradition?! I did create a choice of other scientist sketches following the similar theme, and a favourite was chosen and vectored up to final artwork. Let me know what you think or if you'd have preferred a different scientist from my sketches.

Empiribox Logo - design, animate and icon amends

Following the scientist character design, I also helped work on the company logo a little by developing the icons used amongst the text. As you can see the logo incorporates a rocket ship, a test tube and a bug. I designed a few variations of each icon and tried several colour schemes.

We also tried to get a bit of extra fun into the logo and decided to have a little play with animating the logo for the website. You can see the simple animated logo below.

If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions or questions then please feel free to comment below or contact me in whatever way is best for you. Enjoy :)

Caveboy - Caveman Character Design and Illustration

A client needed a caveman, or to be more specific a caveboy character created. The character needed to appeal to kids and was to be used for learning and informational purposes in an environment that specifically deals with heritage and historical education.

Things to consider were that the character looked fun and friendly but not too cartoony. Also needed to be considered was that the character could have the potential to be dressed in different period costume to show the same boy in different outfits and therefore periods of time.

You can see my first stage of sketches, and following feedback from the client the final vector artwork for the caveboy is shown with and without a background. Any feedback is appreciated as always. Cheers and enjoy!

New Logo Design for We Are Epic - Corporate Identity Branding

I was asked to help design the new corporate identity, logo for We Are Epic (Epic for short). I have been working with the Leicester based design company for some time, and therefore had a good idea of the type of business they are and what style of branding would work for them.

We worked closely together to come up with a text based design, simply concentrating on the word 'epic'. The new branding needed to be fresh but fun, with the ability to use the logo in many colour schemes including a single coloured version. I tried a variety of text styles in an attempt to get the 'feel' of the brand just right. You can see my first stage of designs on the image below with the blueish squares. I've also added my initial sketches so you can see exactly where my design process begins.

The client then narrowed the choice to two potentials as you can see on the second pic. We also tried a few colour variations to see what worked for the future.

The final logo can be seen above in a single black colour. I think you'll agree there are some obvious links to perhaps an 80's style, but hopefully a more modern twist and different or advanced enough to stand the test of time. Let me know what you think or if you'd have chosen a different path. Cheers and enjoy!

Sergeant SME reporting for duty

Attention! This is Sergeant SME or Sgt Sme (SME is an industry acronym for “subject matter expert”). He's a character I've created working with We Are Epic, the design, PR and marketing communications company based in Leicester. Nexus Defence was the client and they provide specialist security equipment and consultancy within the counter terrorist arena. Quite a serious topic!

The brief was to create a character that was 'quite anonymous'. This made the project a little trickier than normal as the brief totally goes against the usual reason for creating a character. When a character design project lands on my desk it usually requires a special, unique and stand-out character, quite the opposite to anonymous I think you'll agree :)

The service Sgt SME is promoting is a fairly serious one, so after some initial sketches (see below) it was decided to steer clear of anything too cartoony. We quickly decided to advance one of the sketches and create a simplistic vector version (see below) of the soldier in full kit holding a detector. We tried a few variations on the uniform and also tried adding some background colour, but finally decided on the colours you see on the big Sarge below.

As usual let me know what you think. Anonymous enough do you think? Cheers and enjoy!