Sultanes de Mayagüez

If you've read this portfolio/blog before, you know how much I enjoy creating characters.

So you can imagine my joy when I was approached to do the Character Design, for the new image of the Baseball Team: Sultanes de Mayagüez.

 I began my process by sketching out a few possible Sultans. I even went ahead and gave some of them color, but was unimpressed.

After some tinkering and more sketching, I finally had a sketch I was willing to work with.

With that first stage done, I proceeded to present my sketch which was given the thumbs up, and so I began creating it in vector format.

Although I really like the result, the client suggested we got rid of the chest hair, which I resisted to do, but accepted. Guess it needed to be more pleasing to the eyes of children. I've always wanted to do something like that, reminds me somewhat of those old Popeye cartoons where he ate his spinash and his chest blew up like a balloon, showing of a tattoo of a battleship. Remember those? Anyway, I digress.

So I got rid of the chest hair and the 5'o clock shadow and gave him a more clean look. The client was pleased. Now, at this stage, the team did not have the uniform yet so I didn't even know the colors of the team, but I knew that was bound to influence the design once it came up.

And so it did and we figure we might as well dress him in the team's uniform, that way we could eventually even do a suit and someone can run around in it, as the team's mascot.

And so, another finished project,  another smile on my face. Just love how this one came up. What do you think?