Sneezing Panda

The reaction of the mother panda was sooo funny! priceless moment. I'm trying to look for some ideas for my character design portfolio by searching into animals?

Snacks & Sweets Packaging

Okay, one question. is it about the taste or about the looks that sells a product? The packaging was definatly what made me brought this stuff haha. For this post, Im showing the soda pop candies that I got from the store.


The sweets actually looks like the character on the packaging. Its very faint but the eyes and mouth are printed onto the candy. It would be better if they had more expressions rather just the smily face.
hmmm. I can see their attempt to make the plastic container appear like the shapes of clouds. There's a range of different face expressions on each cloud to show this happy personality.
This was another soda pop candy but it wasn't as eye catching. But you know what? it tasted better ^^. Unlike the cloud candy, this one doesn't shout out as much. The wrapper on the packaging is a lot less and only around the top neck of the plastic container. Interesting choice of bottle shape. It twists slightly...

I would cover more of the container with the wrapper and add more characters otherwise it won't be able to stand out well to sell.

EBISU? the sushi knight?

buwhahahah, I love browsing around the web looking at others work. I was typically on deviant art and I spotted this little guy. I laughed at first but I thought its a really clever concept ^_^. This was drawn by someone called Animaiden but the other details are unkonwn. The colour scheme is similar to shrimps and prawns and the green probabily relates to that wasabi stuff. The word Ebi means prawns so maybe thats how the designer gave this guy the name Ebisu? who knows.

I thought that this artist could of drawn more portraits for this character like more different facial expressions or have various types of costume designs as well. I assume this is the final design but its a shame that I couldn't find the previous ideas and developments.

No Way it looks like...

Outside the town of Leeds there's a new chinese snack shop called 'Asia Express' that opened not long ago so I went to check it out. And I spotted something which looked like this (0.0) !

I was kinda shock but laughing at the same time because its very similar to the character I created for my projects!
Anyways, I ended up buying this chocolate snack for 0.99p (not bad) and I thought the packaging is pretty nice. even the shape of the container looks like a caramel pudding hahaha.
When I opened the container! BAM! I'm surprised when I looked at the chocolate. Its good how the company applied the image of the pudding character onto the shapes of the chocolate itself. This helped me think about not only the designs on the exterior but also considering the insides of products.

TASK2- Where are they? How will they find me?

Its because I'am here to create characters for games or icon mascots, my clients can come from all over but its probabily from games and animation companies. Communication is most likely to do done digitally through e-mail contacts.

To understand my marketing environment, I will use the PEST analysis. For my self run buisness/company for character designing, Technology is what i would be most concerened of.
In politics I would have issues of Copyright licenses and recycling paper waste. I will need to learn about self employment and taxing issues. Its good to start in the UK Leeds because Im more familiar with the laws and trading. In economics not alot is to be thought about since im working from home environments. If i'm selling my character designs to a client overseas then the costs needs to be calculated. I have to become familiar with the exchange rates with the british pound currency. With society in the UK there are many ethics and nationalities. But Im lucky that starting here is most benificial because English is the main language needed for buisness communications. But since im also Chinese I can speak both cantonese and mandarin which is one of the most common languages in the world. In this country there are many people with different interests so its a good place to start my work. Techonolgy is very important and crucial to my buisness, within designing i must keep up to date with the software and using good graphic tablets and computers. The internet is also needed for contacting or recieving commitions and requests from the clients. Being online is fast for communication with the high tech society today as it is forever improving.

Defining my target customers : Segmentaiton

Demographics: Around 16-34 and mainly students or those who like and work with animation and games. Could be for any culture or nationality.

Geographic Factors: Im working from home so transport costs is not much problem but i will have to send products through post. My work is travelled through the internet so the location, climates and city environments is not where i will be competing for buisness.

Psychology: For those who are animators, designers and gamers. Otaku (anime lovers). Students, for those who like cute things.

Behaviour: Its for those who are regular internet users. My work and information will be on the web. My designs will provide by customers a idea and reference for their work. It can be used for their own buisness. For those who buy my illustrations, it can be for self interests, inspiration, display and decorations.

Hat Collector

maybe if you didn't know already... I can go mad for hats and will do anything to buy one if i really like its style. More or less I think I buy a hat almost every week but then I don't get to wear them all. One day my friends mentioned I can actually open a hat shop but then there's no way I'll do that. I go crazy when I see an unusual hat like the ones with a strange style. This way I think that hat is 'RARE' or special. 1 thing I hate is to see another person in town wearing the same hat as me!!!! it can get really annoying!

Hats are great for covering up your greasy hair and make you look good at the same time.

Anyways thats enough about my hat collection. Above is a photo I took earlier but its only about 40% of my collection.

Lomo Camreas: Fisheye No.2

I first learnt about this camera's exsistence from one of my friends facebook photos (shown below). I thought it was just a toy until I was informed that its called a Lomo Camera but this one is a Fisheye edition? I was seriously fascinated and confused at the same time so I looked into it.



The camera is known for its feature 'fisheye barrel distortion' and when I saw these picture samples on the website I was amazed! and understood how the camera got its name from haha.









Overall I love to get one of these gadgets but the downside is that it uses 35mm film.

Panda USB Hand Warmers

I went on www.gadget4all.com and I spotted these 'handy' little things. I might consider purchasing these for the winter. There are times when the room is absolutely freezing and your hands go stiff therefore not being able to type on the keyboard properly. Thank god this was made haha.

Basically, you need to plug it into the USB port and then it will start to warm up. They have other designs like rabbit, bears and even just simple gloves.