Findingviews

Earlier this week I released the first Mascot of Madness, it’s an idea I’ve been playing around with for a little while but I hadn’t decided on how to go about it. First decision was the final format. The Mascots of Madness have always been intended to be a series of images so I had to decided the size and format. I figured on T shirts. That was due to the drawing style. I wanted them to be fun and a little childlike, so I thought T Shirts would be echo the fun side.

The first Mascot of Madness is “Strrrach”. Each mascot has its own name and none will be easy to pronounce. After all these are creatures of madness. Strrach is the mascot of peeping, looking, running after and grabbing. He is all eyes on stalks and narrow limbs.

Strrach is narrow, pipe-cleaner styled and a little bit hairy. To achieve this I used a large curved brush for much of his body. To say the brush was curved is an understatement. It was a series of curves – enough to give the outline of his body a little structure and his hairs a little kink. Another similar brush was also used – sparingly to add some extra fuzziness.

Strrachs eyes needed a kind of blankness.  I thought of a realistic eye, and then thought that a real eye would be a little out of place amongst the fantasy of Strrrach, I also wanted his body to reflect his soul and not his eyes. His eyes are simple gradient fills with a red centre. I hope its not too simple and still fitting for the image.

The body needed to be odd. Not a true torso. Just something for pipe-cleaners to fit around. So a simple generated interface fill with some brush spots over it would suffice.

Strrach was made with some simple tools, that were carefully picked. The rule all the way through was simplicity leading to a basic form. Creating Strrach was about setting some principles and working them through to an outcome. That is the creative principle behind the first Mascot of Madness.