My Blue Nose Friends
This is all my own work, copyright of Carte Blanche Greetings Limited.
e: info@ runninghead.com t: @runninghead360 w: www.runninghead.com
My Blue Nose Friends is major cute beanie plush toy brand, currently available to buy from Tattyteddytoys.com, Characterwise and many other well known high street and online retail outlets. After taking on this brand I developed it as sole Creative for several years, moving it forward in to new territories and generating an enormous amount of artwork, product and revenue.
This required designing more than a hundred characters (over several years) and their corresponding plush toys.
I also designed many other assets to support the brand, including Free Standing Display Units, web/phone game character turnarounds and environments, promotional imagery, jigsaws and a whole range of other assets for both print and screen media.
This required designing more than a hundred characters (over several years) and their corresponding plush toys.
I also designed many other assets to support the brand, including Free Standing Display Units, web/phone game character turnarounds and environments, promotional imagery, jigsaws and a whole range of other assets for both print and screen media.
A Christmas 4 Character Scene featuring, clockwise from left, a wombat, a lovebird, a triceratops and an asian lion.
I loved drawing these characters in the old style but a brand refresh was called for so I took the opportunity to standardise and advance the studio workflow as well
The image above shows the old style and new style for comparison.
Both have their merits so I developed the new workflow to be both efficient and "backwards-compatible".
With just a few clicks I could convert any Blue Nosed Friend illustration between the two styles, as required.
The image above shows the old style and new style for comparison.
Both have their merits so I developed the new workflow to be both efficient and "backwards-compatible".
With just a few clicks I could convert any Blue Nosed Friend illustration between the two styles, as required.
A Blue Nose Spider in the original illustration style.
Above are the first 12 Blue Nose Friend characters redesigned in the new style.
A Blue Nose Orangutan, very happy with his giant cupcake :)
A Blue Nose Sloth. The brand has a very restrictive colour palette, though this was relaxed somewhat at my suggestion to produce a brand refresh sales boost.
Blue nose Black ram, both side and front views
I championed the inclusion of both exotic and prehistoric animals in the brand, with great success.
Above is a Blue Nose Sabre-Tooth Tiger.
Above is a Blue Nose Sabre-Tooth Tiger.
Above is an example of a "Home Scene", a promotional image featuring 4 new beanie plush toys, released every quarter.
It's a real challenge to display 4 quite disparate characters within the same environment, within the image extent while at the same time conveying some kind of narrative. It's made even more difficult by the need for the image to work well at various screen resolutions and print sizes.
It's a real challenge to display 4 quite disparate characters within the same environment, within the image extent while at the same time conveying some kind of narrative. It's made even more difficult by the need for the image to work well at various screen resolutions and print sizes.
Santa's Workshop scene version 1
Santa's Workshop scene 2