Designing a Digitally Illustrated Mascot for Video Game Promotion

For her diploma thesis, she chose a topic that describes the entire process of designing a digitally illustrated character and how it can serve as a marketing mascot for video game promotion. The theoretical part first includes a brief description and various types of digital illustration. She focused in more detail on researching and studying the design principles of a character – how to create a 'properly' designed character that will effectively convey the story we are trying to communicate. The final result of the diploma thesis is a digitally illustrated character, consistent with design principles, which could serve as a mascot that would attract potential buyers of an imaginary video game.

Problem

For her diploma thesis, she chose a topic that describes the entire process of designing a digitally illustrated character and how it can serve as a marketing mascot for video game promotion. The theoretical part first includes a brief description and various types of digital illustration.

Solution and Method

She focused in more detail on researching and studying the design principles of a character – how to create a 'properly' designed character that will effectively convey the story we are trying to communicate. She relied on these principles throughout the entire practical part and the design process of her product. She also researched the origin and listed examples of good and bad video game mascots.

In this chapter, she also investigated how mascots affect different age groups and the actual market success of mascots. This research significantly helped the author in proving or rejecting her assumed hypotheses. She also briefly defined the concept of video games and examples of good marketing strategies in video game promotion, as this is substantially related to the usability of her final product.

The final part of the theoretical section describes the overarching theme, which is the relationship between art, sustainability and design. Due to the growing problem of environmental destruction, this topic is extremely important. In this topic, she focused on the production of digital and physical mascots and how they affect the environment.

She also briefly touched upon the possibilities for improvement in the production itself. After researching book and written sources, the practical part follows, where she herself digitally designed and illustrated a character that could serve as a mascot for a non-existent video game. She illustrated its basic form, added three different emotions and a sitting pose.

She also determined its basic colour scheme. All the knowledge she acquired in the research was now being refined and applied. After creating the final product, she made a plan on how she would promote it.

Results

The final result of the diploma thesis is a digitally illustrated character, consistent with design principles, which could serve as a mascot that would attract potential buyers of an imaginary video game.