I’m writing to share the launch of a new brand identity system (logo, tagline, etc) for this site.

For the logo design, I wanted a character-based logo that met two criteria:

1. The character is iconic for MMORPGs
2. The character is distinctive and fun

I decided that a Dwarf character with a 2H axe would be a perfect fit to meet the 1st requirement.

To bring that Dwarf character to life, I’ve been working with two talented graduates from Ex’pression College for Digital Arts: an artist named Fiona Quan and an animator named Calvin Huang.

To fulfill the 2nd requirement above, Fiona and I pursued a “Chibi” representation for the Dwarf, and here’s what we landed on:

Fiona did an amazing job of representing my requirements visually! She captured the personality and essence of a Chibi character and provided rich details such as the notches in the axehead and the chain mail links.

As you can see in the above picture, I came up with the following tagline:

pro guides, pro gameplay

Is that a lofty tagline? Absolutely! That said, based on the thousands of positive comments and props I’ve received over the years for my guides and gameplay videos, I think the tagline captures my brand essence and the distinctive value that I provide to the gaming community.

With the logo created, the next phase of the brand identity work was developing an animation clip that I can use as an intro/outro for videos and to kickoff my streamcasts. Here is what Calvin created:

We incorporated sound effects from the following authors:

• Ben “Benboncan” from freesounds.org: author of the sound effects used for the axe downswing, axe upswing, and drive-by effect for the website address and tagline. Thanks Ben!

You can check out Fiona’s artwork blog at 2dtamago.blogspot.com.

You can find Calvin’s portfolio online at hanimated.com.

Thanks again Fiona and Calvin for the amazing work! :)