Pig Cartoon for a new service
a illustration project by jwitchel

Brief updates

19-Aug-09 9:13 p.m. GMT

I talked at length in the brief about the importance of expressing emotion. I think I need to give a concrete example. When books are rated by the children they will have five basic ratings "Loved it", "Hated it", "Too Easy", "Too Hard", "Not Interested". So at a minimum I need to be able to imagine the pig expressing those 5 emotions.

Think about a couple of situations:
- A sports crazy boy loving a biography of Jackie Robinson
- A shy book worm girl loving Little House on the Prairie
- A text messaging tweener expressing disinterest in Harry Potter

The pig has to have a universal appeal to these archetypes and more.

21-Aug-09 5:33 p.m. GMT

Quick update on comments and scoring. I appreciate that each illustration is a considerable amount of work. I will comment and score every single submission without exception. If you haven't been scored yet then it's because I'm still kicking it around.

Part of what I'm doing is showing the illustrations to various children and seeing how it might factor into final package designs. Some illustrations get more consistent feedback then others, those I rate sooner. The lack of a rating is a measure of nothing. I just means I'm still thinking about it.

My apologies, I should have made that clearer sooner.
-j

23-Aug-09 2:17 p.m. GMT

More feedback: Having spent the last couple of days waiving print outs in front of children and parents and stopping just short of stalking shoppers at the mall, :)

Many of the designs are of a young pig (in some cases a baby pig). These are not testing well with older children. The target market is ages 7-12 with the upper age being 15 (8th grade). So for those of you without children, this age group is reading adult books (think Lord of Rings, Twilight, even Tom Clancy type books). They have cell phones, they are just starting to get interested in dating, some have jobs, they are often on serious sports teams and other meaningful after-school activities. They are in many ways, mini-adults. It's what makes designing for this demographic hard -- the spread is huge.

Anyway, the point is that little kids always look up, older kids never look down. So designs that appeal to the older end of this age spectrum are testing better.
-j