Character design

Nola is a smoke shop in Miami. The owners asked for a character they could use on the shop’s website, on social media and in print. There was no existing mascot and no fixed idea of what it should be.

We started with quick pencil sketches in several directions, from animals to people. None of them felt connected to the shop. The answer came from its name: Nola is a common nickname for New Orleans, the home of American voodoo. We took voodoo culture as the inspiration and based the character on a voodoo doll.

We drew a series of doll variants with different proportions, faces and details, and narrowed them down with the client. The final version has stitched fabric, a button eye, a heart patch on the chest and a mischievous grin. We then drew a character sheet with poses and expressions, so the doll looks consistent wherever it appears.

We redrew the final sketch as vector artwork in Adobe Illustrator, so it works at any size on the web, in print and on merchandise. Before the animation, we drew a storyboard for the ad campaign with the doll as the main character. A motion designer then animated it in After Effects, and we exported short loops as Lottie files for the website and as video for social media.

An illustrator and a motion designer worked on the character for about four weeks.

The shop now uses the doll on its website and social media. The client approved the character after one round of revisions.