{"id":2145,"date":"2008-08-11T23:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jasonbot.com\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2008-08-11T23:01:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T06:01:00","slug":"mascot-mania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jasonbot.com\/?p=2145","title":{"rendered":"Mascot Mania!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"
CAUTION: The following post is uncharacteristically robust with content.<\/i><\/p>\n

You might recall that last year I became obsessed with the Fuwa<\/a>, official mascots of the 2008 Olympics. I had a few laughs about it<\/a>, and Mark Hale had a few more<\/a>. In spite of my trademark disdain for sports\/exercise, I watched a little bit of the Olympics over the weekend, and I was disappointed to find that the Fuwa have been conspicuously absent. So, I sat down and busted out a drawing:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
click above for larger view<\/span><\/div>\n

If you’re just here for discussion of awesome<\/i> mascots, skip down a bit. The next paragraph is gonna be me yammering on about my process.<\/p>\n

Several of my cronies have been requesting that I draw more involved pieces, with multiple characters, backgrounds, and, I dunno<\/i>, cohesive lighting or something. The simplicity of the Fuwa made them ideal for a more complex piece–I got to concentrate on composition and color, rather than obsess over costume details. The composition here is the right idea, but the execution is lacking. All in all, I can live with it, because the entire production of this piece was spontaneous, and for me<\/i>, pretty fast–the whole thing took me about five and a half hours.<\/p>\n

As if it wasn’t enough that the Fuwa are the best official Olympic mascots of all time (you can see their competition here<\/a>), Ren<\/a> alerted me to the fact that BBC’s Olympic coverage had a mascot of their own–none other than Monkey:<\/p>\n

\"Photobucket\"<\/div>\n

Monkey, AKA Sun Wukong the Monkey King<\/a>, is easily my favorite literary character of all time (sorry Batman and Naruto, it was a close race!), so you can imagine that I’d be pretty stoked. But on top of that, who do you suppose provided the art and sound for BBC’s incarnation of Monkey? None other than Jamie Hewlett<\/a> and Damon Albarn<\/a>, best know for collaborating on Gorillaz<\/a>. <\/p>\n