Mascots

This is the last color piece I did for the Stone Arch Jake Maddox basketball books. It's an image of the team's mascot, the Wildcat, and, honestly, I'm not even sure if this image will ever show up in any of the books. Maybe somewhere on the covers or maybe on chapter starts or a page inside of the book. But, he wasn't in the manuscripts anywhere so your guess is as good as mine as to where he might land.

I designed the mascot to make it look like a kid had a huge paper machete tiger mask over his head. The idea came to me from an old episode of "Freaks and Geeks" starring a very young Shia Lebeouf as the school's viking mascot. He wore a HUGE viking head and it looked just great.

The only other time I designed a mascot like this was for a sticker book I did years ago. The art director asked for a mascot but the name of the school or team was never decided. So, taking matters into my own hands I decided the team would be named after my old high school team, The Portland Bulldogs. I designed a logo for the team jerseys and a mascot, much like this design, but of a bulldog.

In the early goings the team was put into generic green and white jerseys with an oval for a logo. I guess they didn't want to offend any of the cat lovers out there by putting a dog on a team's jersey. So, with the generic team chosen, the mascot idea was thrown out the window.

Actually, I should have redesigned the mascot to just be a generic green oval with hands and feet. That would have been funny. I don't think it would have passed through all of the changes though.

So, sorry Portland Bulldog fans, your time has yet to come. And, for all of you Wildcat fans out there, well, we'll just have to see where this guy shows up.