Let's Have Some Fun! Meet Benny the Bee – An Illustrated Mascot by J-VO

in #art7 years ago

“What the hell do bees have to do with muscadines?” 


This was the thought that went through my head when I was asked to create this little guy. Before I get too far into talking up the Bee, let me provide a little back drop to the company, just to help frame everything… if you really don’t give a hoot you can scroll down to the next paragraph and just get to the creative stuff! Nature’s Pearl is an MLM based company that sells Muscadine Grape Seed product in the form of capsules, extract and infused organic skin care.  I was the Creative Director for about 5 years there managing their brand and developing all of their sales collateral, powerpoint presentations, product packaging, advertisements, video creation and web design.

One day the owner sends a request for me to develop a mascot – and it has to be a bee. I had no idea, but apparently, bees LOVE muscadines. I used to take field trips to the vineyards for image resource gathering and witnessed it first hand. They go freaking nuts over these damn grapes y’all.  The best thing ever? Eating one of these suckers straight off the vine – they. are. delicious (the muscadines – not the bees – HAH!).  


So, I started to play around with some concepts and I ended up with Benny - a friendly, happy little muscadine bee that would make for a perfect casual, but playful, mascot (promoting events, special sales, products, etc.) There are 6 different Benny Bees total that I created during my time there! These were a lot of fun to create – each one is based around a different themed event or promotional sale. We eventually made a Muscadine juice that could be purchased as an alternative to some of the other artificial and extremely sugary juices on most grocery store shelves marketed towards kids – Benny made an appearance on the packaging for this product and he was a hit! I hope you like him 





I even made a Benny Buck that could be used at special events. Re-creating stylistic elements that you would see on other currency was a lot of fun!


@j-vo

If you enjoyed my post and are interested in seeing more of what I do and where I go, please consider following me, up-voting my post, and re-steeming to the rest of the Steemit community! I look forward to following each of you back and I look forward to getting to know everyone :) <3

All photography and creative artwork displayed in this post were created by @j-vo.

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What a super cute little bee! Very cool! Your posts are always awesome, enjoyed!

Thats a really cool story (: the bee is cute too

Thank you - he was a lot of fun! I was combining my old files from a drive the other day and saw them - I almost had forgotten about them - looking at them as a series and adapting him to different themes was a fun challenge.

What a handsome fellow. And I have you to thank for getting me to google "Muscadine" and learn more than I ever knew about grapes!

One minor caveat. If this handsome creature is out gathering pollen and nectar, it's undoubtedly a lady. Male bees (drones) don't do any work, and only leave the hive when it's "business time" with the queen on her nuptial flight.

They probably do spend their extra time playing rock music, though. It's not like the drones have much else to do!

HAHA! Thank you for pointing that out! We really just went with the boy because others in the company liked the double "b" words - lol.. sigh. I'm sure you know how the corporate world can be at times :D Thank you for your comment and teaching ME something!

Lol! Thanks for taking my comment in the light-hearted manner in which it was intended! I spent a couple summers working with a professor studying honeybee dance communication, so I know a little more than the average bear about bees and honey!

Keep up the great work - your stuff is very fun!

Absolutely - Always room for improvement and room to learn new things :)
How interesting - honeybee dance communication - now I have something to google - HAH!

You-re awesome!

i love the post well done.
Iam still waiting for the design we talked about @j-vo

LOL Sorry @tinashe - I will work on it this week - PROMISE!

ok thats cool,How is your experience so far on steemit?

So far I am having a LOT of fun and I'm really enjoying the variety of content and interacting with everyone! I definitely intend to make this a permanent home for my social fun and creative sharing!

Thats great,feel free to contact me if you have any new posts that need a resteem.Will be glad to help,your work must go out there and steemitians should see it.

Thank you Tinashe, I really appreciate that! I will 😁

ohk thank you

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Nice graphics :)

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