NI-Limits Blog

As promised when we originally posted about the US$ 250 Mascot Design Competition back in August of 2007, today is the day that we were supposed to announce the winner and sing glorious praise to all the contestants. However, the truth of the matter is, we only received one valid entry, which just scrapped through in time one day before the closing date, but certainly did not provide us with enough choice with which to announce a winner or remove our temporary penguin.

However, genuine praise, admiration and thanks must go to Thomas Novotny from Vienna (Austria) for having taken the time to properly submit his design. As a design student and cartoon artist who is working very hard towards getting into the mascot design business, which he finds are more challenging and interesting pursuit when compared to graphic design in general, it is obvious he has a future.

Thomas also took the time to explain his design:

The Mascot’s Name:
Bundy (The Palm Civet)

The Mascot’s History (in the words of Thomas):
Bundy is a Banded Palm Civet. As you are an Malaysian company, I tried finding an animal that lives there and found about this creature. I think taking a more exotic animal as mascot is better than taking the usual animals like foxes or felines, as people already associate these with many companies. This character is more unique and should stick in peoples minds.

THANKS AGAIN THOMAS - BUT GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS

After several discussions between management, it was decided that rather than bin the idea of looking for outside talent to help us find our new mascot, we would extend the deadline by 9 months and increase the prize money by 20%, whilst making more effort to promote the competition.

We also decided that over the coming month, we would provide more detailed explanations and examples of the styles that we are looking to find and the conditions behind the mascot design that will need to be considered.

For now, we will provide the following information
(but will have more to come):

Deadline for entries = 30th of September, 2008

Grand prize = US$ 300

Runner-up Prize = US$ 60

We are definitely seeking a vector-based design, but do intend to animated the character in the future and use it across a broad spectrum of mediums so are not looking for something too cartoon-ish in nature.

Although we are based in Malaysia, our full company name is No International Limits, so we feel it is more important to symbolise what we do, rather than where we come from.

A few examples of things we have stumbled upon in the past that work for us (in their style and quality) include:

1. This example keeps things simple and shows how tracing can help

2. This example shows just how easy (and clean) it is to have fun

3. This example shows vectoring done with style (and gradients)

4. Simple cartoons can make one forget about cartoons…

Again, we will provide much more information over the coming month, and hope to attract a healthy selection of artists that we can in-turn help to promote and maybe even offer a job or some future freelancing work…