NEOMED Walking Whale

neomed university walking whale cartoon mascot character

Walking Whale cartoon mascot character created for NEOMED (Northeast Ohio Medical University) as their official mascot. The “walking whale” isn’t actually a whale as one might think. It was discovered by one of the scientists at the university in fossil form, and is a transitional whale species that could swim and also walk. It got the nickname “walking whale”, and the university decided to run with that as the mascot.

This was a tricky project as the rough sketch of the mascot costume had already been decided upon, so I needed to work up a character based on that early rough sketch. After a few concepts, we began to “evolve” the character to it’s final form.

Below are some “transitional” sketch concepts of the character:

Walking-Whale-sketch-v02a Walking-Whale-sketch-v02c

You can see how I was aiming for a more whale-like approach to begin with, and eventually the eyes moved forward and got a more aggressive look. Without the final costume to refer to, it was a bit of a challenge. But in the end, the client loved the design.

Below are some photos of the final mascot costume, posed along with some other Northeast Ohio university mascots. Coincidentally, I also designed the mascot for the Hiram Terriers! I think the final Walking Whale mascot costume came out great, definitely the coolest one of the bunch.

walking-whale-mascot-costume-01

From left: Kent State Golden Flash, some old guy, NEOMED Walking Whale, Cleveland State Viking, Hiram Terrier.
From left: Kent State Golden Flash, NEOMED’s president, NEOMED Walking Whale, Cleveland State Viking, Hiram Terrier.

Check out more photos and a video over at the Record-Courier’s Walking Whale article.