Have you ever noticed the number of companies who are attaching fictional mascot characters to their products and services in their advertising campaigns?
That may be because they have proven to be very successful. Toshiba’s Xario Heroic Performance ad campaign with Pop Art Properties generated approximately $26 million in sales.
Pop Art Properties excels in this type of Intellectual Property design, specializing in characters from a heightened reality, science fiction, mythological or superhero niche.
Joe St. Pierre and the Pop Art Properties studio worked with Toshiba in developing a superhero character to represent their medical scanning device, the Xario.
Joe collaborated with the client on conceptualizing and designing the Xario and Katherine characters to best represent and reveal the features of this unique product. Xario and Katherine were used in a promotional campaign that included a promotional comic book, six animatic episodes for the Xario website, and several advertisement illustrations.
The Xario campaign is still unique within the medical field.
Joe St.Pierre is represented by Shannon Associates
The Process - The Character Design process varies from one project to the other, depending on the client and the schedule restraints. Generally, it begins with a detailed discussion with the client regarding the overall direction of the character. Personality of the character are discussed. A full history, supporting cast and overall "universe" for the character can also be provided so the viewer/customer may immerse themselves in the full story of the character.
The first round presentation usually includes black and white sketch drawings, depicting distinct directions the character can be presented in.
In this case, the client wanted a more realistic approach, more of a heightened reality rather than an overt superheroic look, while embracing some of the more traditional features of the superhero costume. Some live action commercials were being filmed for the campaign as well, so the character had to be consistently believable from one media to the other.
After feedback and further discussion, a direction is chosen for the design, and a couple of variations may be presented on that same theme.
From this point, color ideas are also introduced for discussion.
The third round illustrates the final stage, where details are fine tuned, final decisions are made, and a character is realized.
Here’s a few more of the sketch cards I did for the Marvel: Dangerous Divas set. You can also find them in the “Comics” section.
Divas part 4
Here’s a few more of the sketch cards I did for the Marvel: Dangerous Divas set. You can also find them in the “Comics” section.
Many Storms, Wasp, Invisible Woman and Hepzibah of the Starjammers
I contributed 50 sketch cards to the “Marvel Dangerous Divas” set, published by Rittenhouse and released on March 23. I’ll be posting some images in the “Comics” section of this site over the next few weeks, and here are a few below:
This was a TV spot mashing some of the art produced for the Croc Hunter promotional comic book with live action. Fun Stuff! Joe
