When Dynamo came to us and asked if we’d be interested in doing designs for the new packs of Tayto’s Mighty Munch, Chickatees, Snaps and Johnny Onion Rings, my response was probably less than professional. It involved a lot of jumping up and down begging ‘Can we???? Huh, huh? Can we? Pleeeeeeese!’. Not my finest hour!
The old designs were definately due a revamp, and when it came to Chickatees (the first to be changed), Dynamo wanted a more manic looking chicken than the one on the previous packs.
It’s quite something growing up with crisps like Chickatees to actually re-designing the characters on the packs. It’s one thing seeing a poster you’ve done on a bus stop, quite another to see it as rubbish blowing past you on the street!
Of course getting to that stage took a lot of work. To say there was some tweaking would be an understatement! I started off just drawing the character out on one Photoshop layer (Oh, the naivety!) By the time the design was signed off on, there was about 35 layers. Pupils, brows, wrinkles, noses, ears, cheeks, knee joints, tails, claws etc. All were separated so that tweaking the design didn’t cause heightened blood pressure. For example, click the mouth, scale….rotate, warp (this tool is definately my new best friend in Photoshop….if it was a guy I’d marry it)…… and DONE!
Dynamo and Tayto were very good at keeping our energy levels up by sending over 5 or 6 boxes of crisps to the office at random intervals (purely for research purposes, of course!?)
So now after months of waiting….(and of sounding like a 6 year old: “Are they out yet? Are they out yet?”) the new packets have finally hit the stores, and I for one will be giving the diet a miss for awhile and eating at least a packet a day!



2 comments so far
Well done Bro, the pinnacle of your career thus far!
17 April 2009
3:07 pm
mmmm….I’d love some Chickatees right now…!!
28 April 2009
1:40 pm