Corn Guy Mascot Redesign

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Meet "Corn Guy", the name I've bestowed upon the mascot for local Illinois-based community service organization the Chatham Jaycees. Corn Guy has been the face of Chatham's annual Sweet Corn Festival for several years, and I had the honor of giving him an updated design refresh!

The Prompt: The Jaycees wanted to retain Corn Guy's core look to keep him recognizable while upgrading him with a fresh and modern feel. He also lacked limbs, but they wanted to feature him on signs in several action poses, including running, dribbling a basketball, and throwing "cow chips", which are exactly what you're probably thinking.

Here's the original Corn Guy in all his corny glory!

Image retrieved from

https://www.facebook.com/Chatham.Jaycees.Sweet.Corn.Festival/

To start, I came up with four possible designs to provide the Jaycees with several options to choose from. I primarily pulled inspiration from rubber hose style animation icons Mickey Mouse and Cuphead:

They loved the look of design number four, so I set about creating Corn Guy's standard waving pose:

Using a 'Mr. Potato head' approach, I began adding different limbs and accessories to the same base frame in order to retain cohesion across Corn Guy's designs. This led to his marathon runner pose, complete with sweatband:

His basketball dribbling pose (no traveling):

And finally, Corn Guy tossing a cow chip to promote the popular cow chip throwing competition!

As a final request, the Jaycees wanted a version with a giant cow chip to showcase it as the centerpiece. I pitched the idea of Corn Guy holding it like a surfboard

and they loved it! The rest is history: