Mascot Mania

Sorry for the scarceness as of late again, folks. I've now broken up for the summer and am now doing 1) a lot of sleeping, 2) sorting out for moving my stuff back home, and 3) working before I lose my job due to the company being bought out. I'll be going through my A to Z sometime soon, there's some work in there I'm really proud of, so I'd like to show it off.

Right now I do want to talk about these guys, seeing as the design community seems to be quite divided on them:

I've not really been keeping up to date with London 2012 until recently. I do make an effort to watch some of the Olympics when it rolls round (at least the opening ceremony), but that's as far as it usually goes.

It was only in the last few weeks I saw these on the front of a bag of sweets (like I said - not been keeping up to date) and thought "lumps of metal? Mascots? What?", and I evidently wasn't the only one. These two have been met with a lot of criticism, but they've grown on me. Admittedly I find the weirdest things adorable, so I might not be a good judge on this, but they have a really cute Monsters Inc/Pixar feel to them and probably wouldn't look too out of place in a Pokemon game either. I also like the colour schemes, they're interesting without being too over-the-top.

I'm still not a huge fan of the style of animation used in the cartoons. Something about the style just looks a little flat to me, and the backgrounds/human characters just look incomplete compared with the 3D and detail of Wenlock and Mandeville themselves, who are animated very well. I think if it were in the hands of a company like Aardman, it would have been immediately recognisable (who hasn't heard of or seen Wallace and Gromit?) as well as full of British charm - the animation here does seem to lack that warmth and detail. Still, the first one in the series (linked above) does manage to get me smiling when Wenlock's clowning around and posing, and Mandeville "barks" back at the dog. N'awwww. They even sound like Pokemon!

In conclusion - to each their own but I'm not quite sure what everyone's in such a tizzy about*. Olympic mascots are meant to be a bit silly and cheesy, as they're not even aimed at the folks who design them - they're there to appeal to kids and try to get them learning or enthusiastic about sport, and given that they seem to be a hit with the young 'uns so far, I think they're doing their job.

* - Maybe it's money-related? The Illuminati? Well, I for one welcome our new shiny, adorable cyclops overlords.