Design A Mouse Contest Entries (Mar 2012)

These are my entries for the "Design a Mouse Contest" in the game <<MouseHunt>>, which I play daily. The goal of the game is to catch mutant mice with various mouse traps in a fantasy land, there are over 300 breeds of mice in the game, some are cute, some are less cute, and some look scary, most are drawn by artist Jacob Johnson. I really admire his talent, and the main reason I'm playing this game is to see more of his artwork.

So when I saw on the game's forum that Jacob is holding a competition to design a mouse, and the winning design will be redrawn by Jacob, signed and mailed to the winner, and may even be added to the game! How could I resist? A few designs immediately started popping out from my head.

At the time of the contest I haven't started my drawing classes yet, and I didn't have the proper tools nor skills to colour these drawings, and so they are only sketches I made with pencils.

The first design is a mouse that's not interested in cheeses like other mice do, this mouse steals "Charms", a consumable trap component that improves the stats of the trap. I think the idea is cool, even though the mouse looks kind of ordinary (in the world of <<MouseHunt>>). The legs and feet look a bit odd, because I was't too familiar with the body structure of mutant mice:

The Charm Collector Mouse (Mar 2012)

Although this design didn't win a place in the competition, but a few months later, a mouse with similar design was released in the game. I was really curious and so I messaged Jacob and asked him whether my design had any influence in this new mouse, but I couldn't get any answer. I wasn't trying to accuse him of stealing my idea or something, after-all, all my mouse designs were inspired by his artworks. Oh well, I guess I'll never find out...

Here's the new mouse, he's called "Lucky Mouse", and I found a few similarities in his appearance to my "Charm Collector Mouse":

1. is holding a charm (the golden globe thing)
2. is carrying a Super Luck Charm chained/tied
3. wears a wristband
4. wears earring(s)
5. wears a 'tailband'
6. wears a belt
7. is next t a stale cheese (most likely on a trap as well)
8. steals/used to steal charms from hunters' traps
9. wears a sneaky smile

Lucky Mouse by Jacob Johnson

The second design was meant to be funny, I didn't expect it to win the contest, but I couldn't let go of the idea. I believed that the game developers must have thought of this analogy, that gamers are grabbing their mouse playing games everyday, so why not design a game to catch imaginary mice?

Optical Mouse (Mar 2012)

The third design was for a particular region in the game that changes season every 80 hours, this mouse is supposed to be more powerful than any other mice in that region, and unlike other mice, can be encountered in all 4 seasons:

Weather Report Mouse (Mar 2012)

This one is of the scary type, a mouse that can submerge itself in shadows, and attack hunters (what gamers are called in the game) from their own shadows. Maybe the design was again, too simple:

Shadowed Mouse (Mar 2012)

This design was obviously inspired by the TV series <<LOST>>, which I happened to be watching at that time. Since there's also an island area in the game, I thought I could design a mouse that's always "LOST" on the island. This one is cute, but I also didn't expect it to win, since it's a parody of a TV series:

Lost Mouse (Mar 2012)

This one I spent a lot of time redrawing just to get the texture right. There's a crafting item in the game called "Rhino Horns", but the size of the horns are rather too small for it to be a real rhino's horn, so I designed this endangered breed to be the source of the horn, also to raise awareness that we shouldn't hunt animals for their body parts:

Endangered Rhino Mouse (Mar 2012)

The last one was, in my opinion, the most creative design (in the whole contest! ha ha), and I actually finished this in HK airport waiting for my plane! This mouse is designed to appear in a location that's filled with oriental stuffs (pagodas, samurais, ninjas, etc.). I watched an anime years ago called <<Read or Die>>, where the heroines can all manipulate paper, I guess that's where my inspiration came from.

And this is also my only design that got a place in the contest (out of hundreds of entries, this one made the top 30 or so, so yes I'm satisfied). I plan to draw it again in colour when I finish my current course (a re-design too, too much toilet paper here):

Origami Mouse (Mar 2012)

The following 2 designs were designed and drawn by my girlfriend May, I think she's much more talented than I am, just look at how beautiful the kimono is!! Unfortunately these didn't win either:

Beauty Mouse by May Pan (Mar 2012)

Guardian of the Dessert Mouse by May Pan (Mar 2012)