We sometimes get asked what the difference is between a cartoon mascot design and a cartoon character design? It’s a good question and one worth exploring a little considering the differences are subtle and not often entirely clear.
What is a Cartoon Mascot?
Some say the term cartoon mascot is used to describe a cartoon character designed for reasons other than pure entertainment. Common uses for a cartoon mascot include representing a sports team, a game clan, a company service, product or an entire brand. Cartoon mascot are also designed in order to add charm and personality to these entities in ways that can either be active or passive. A good example of this would be Ronald McDonald to give a burger company a friendly face or the mascot used for the NBA team, the Boston Celtics. You’ve seen hundreds of cartoon mascot designs in the course of your life and we’ve listed some in our 50 Famous Cartoon Characters which you are sure to recognize.
What about Cartoon Characters?
On the other hand, the term “cartoon character” can be used for cartoons of all kinds. It might be a character used on paper in comic strip or comic book or used on film or TV in the form of animation. You could say that a cartoon character is more often than not, used for entertainment purposes.
Then there’s both in one!
Conversely, some characters could be considered both a cartoon character AND a cartoon mascot. Mickey Mouse for example has for a long time been both a cartoon character (featured in many of his own cartoons) but he’s also the lead cartoon mascot (among many) for Disney.
Cartoon Mascot Design
As a company that specializes in cartoon mascot design we’re proud to have created quite a few ourselves which you can view in our character and cartoon mascot gallery. As a quick overview the process of designing a cartoon mascot goes something like this…
Briefing
Before any designing begins, there needs to be a creative brief. The creative brief is a culmination of all the ideas which are the vision for the mascot. These include ideas on the species, body type, height, skin color, facial expression and other traits which will make up the final mascot design.
Sketching
Next is where the fun begins. The artists then take the creative brief and begin sketching concepts for the mascot. This is even more exciting when more than one artist is involved in the design process because the customer gets to see how different artists interpret the ideas.
Cartoon mascot design sketches of "Jesse".
Coloring
Once the sketch is approved by the customer, the artists then convert the mascot from a pencil sketch into what we art nerds call vector art. This serves as an outline for the artist to color in. The colors used will vary from traditional flat color through to a more contemporary use of gradients in order to achieve a look which has depth.
Cartoon mascot coloring concepts for "Bidzilla"
Delivery
Once the colored mascot design is complete, the only thing left to do is deliver the final art into the hands of the customer.
Everything you need to use your new cartoon mascot in one easy Character pack
All artists and companies do this step differently. We go the extra mile and provide full color, greyscale and black & white versions along with bitmap and vector file formats with every mascot we deliver in our world famous Character Packs.
