I had the opportunity to design a mascot for the very language school i was studying at in Japan from 2010 to 2012. And here im releasing step by step.
http://www.isb.ac.jp/
http://www.isb.ac.jp/
The director of the school at that time told me the Mascot of the Langauge School must be a Bee. Because he said that ISB stands for "I is Bee"/i am bee. And bees are regarded as hard working creatures, which aligns with the japanese ideal of working ethics of the students who will eventually graduate and get to work out there. Their ISB letter type was already decided, i just had to add more to it. So i started with a bee sketch...
Teachers had a vote and decided that it didnt look appealing. And told me to make it more characterlike. My idea was that the black stripes would make the E alphabet shapes when they stand behind the B letter. So it was scrapped and was time to do more.
I gave them these options and let them decide which elements they like the most. They returned markered up copies with which parts they like the most and even with how many teachers like exactly which part...and told me to choose those elements and combine them. But this time make it even more chibi or cartoony.
And here we had this. But somebody in the committee said that "This is not an all girl's school so you must make the mascot gender neutral"...And so i went for the next version.
I tried to make it as gender vague as possible. But the committee went back on their request and told me to make it girly and finally decided on which parts they like the most.
This version was finally approved and now i was able to make a full final vector version of the character and hand it over to the school administration
and along with character sheet
Last but not least, on the school fair day i was asked to make one poster for my classmates who were cooking barbecue for the guests. It was a fun day with variety of activities hosted by all students of the school.
I wonder if they still use this mascot to this day...?
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