About the company
Set out to revolutionize the fingerboarding skating experience with expertly crafted fingerboards, WEASELRAT draws inspiration from a rich skateboarding heritage by infusing the brand with a passion for high-quality materials and craftsmanship.
Set out to provide high-quality, products that empower individuals to push their creativity, express themselves, and dive headfirst into the gritty, immersive world of miniature skateboarding.
The Challenge
The brand needed to stand out, appeal equally to the established fingerboard community as well as the casual collector interested in accurate miniature scale models of skateboards. A retro-inspired look behind the typography and colors, and Ollie, the brand mascot, with a mischieveus character, will help this brand stand out through its personality.
Live site: weaselrat.com
The Mascot
Inspired by his beloved dog Ollie, affectionately nicknamed "Weaselrat" for his slender shape and playful behavior, founder Donnie launched this company.
While the real Ollie is a total sweetheart, we wanted the brand mascot to have a "sketchy" personality, someone that hangs out in front of liquor stores and most likely ask to "bum an extra cigarette" on your way in. Ollie is usually a bit lost in his own world, looking to start trouble around town and knows where the party it's happening. His weakness is Cheese, but not just any kind, the kind you'd find at the gas station mini mart.
With this in mind, we set out to explore how to bring this character to life, and constantly coming up with ideas for him to do.
After some exploration on pencil, we moved to the computer and refined a "2D" version of the character, which is the one we are using on static brand components. We later moved into the 3D space, where we modeled and rigged the character so it can be posed and animated in a number of ways, to have him interact with the brand and our community.
