Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

Finally some really cool mascots! Congratulations to Meomi!
BTW the animation is awesome.

Wow!! These make me a proud Vancouverite. The world will bow before superior Canadian design! Congratulations Vicki, Mike and Munki!

The mascots were designed to cater to the children but out of all the children in BC HOW many do u really think will be going to see the Olympics.
The prices are so HIGH that the average person can not afford to take themelves let alone thier children
I think they are cute if it was for a cartoon on tv but not to represent BC and Canada

Someone posted the mascot site on gigposters last night, and I'm loving them! They're painfully cute!
And I think they represent Canada/BC just fine; read their origins.
"The prices are so HIGH that the average person can not afford to take themelves let alone thier children"
That doesn't surprise me...it's the Olympics.

I already gave up on Olympic mascots, but I love these! I am looking forward to Vancouver games.

Wow... Outside of art/design scene I found reactions to be so much hostile. Instant hate to anything that challenges their mentality. I think somehow mundanes aren't ready for such radical design... and I doubt if they ever will. Yet, I'm glad most kids like them.

what i really dig with these guys is their names. original and varied, which is what i think Canada represents well.

I love the design and the characters, but not sure how this represents Canada. Both the name and the graphics are distinctly Japanese, this could easily be Tokyo or Taipei olympics.

Really don't understand how this represents Canada and BC, although of course this represents well the asian diversity in Vancouver.

"Really don’t understand how this represents Canada and BC."

Do they have to? I was thinking about Izzy and those mascots from Turin Olympics.

These are by far the best Olympic mascots I've seen! They're just excellent, original character.

The first day these designs were revealed there was a huge public outcry. People were sending in harsh emails to the local Vancouver news about how much they hated them because they didn't represent Vancouver. All of the people writing in were adults.

Nobody seems too concerned about whether or not the kids like them. Every child I've talked to absolutely loves the designs. They're the one's bugging their parents to buy them for Christmas. The designs are very imaginative and fun and at $25 for a Plushie I'm sold. I'm glad they took a chance on these designs and didn't go for the obvious Orca Whale, Bear, or Stanley Park chipmunk.

At first, they look a bit over engineered. But after visiting them at their natural habitat - i.e. the Zinc Roe web site http://mash.zincroe.com/mascot/en/index.php, I can see why kids love them, and I start to like them too.

I find it rather offensive that these characters sport such a japan-esque look. I understand that kids may love them, but why not make an attempt at getting kids interested in their own culture? For instance, we could have used some sort of First Nations art to design these mascots. I personally call these designs 100% sellout, especially considering the fact that the 2008 Olympics are being held in an oriental country.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE anime... I just don't feel that it's the right representation for CANADA.

The mascots were a good concept, with a bad execution.

The guardian spirit and/or spirit bear are good ideas.. but they way they have turned out is not speaking to everyone in BC. It's really only really appealing to the Asian community.
The wonderful thing about BC is we're so diverse in our different cultures and religions! I really feel that they could have executed these concepts in a more diverse way. Or instead of having them all look like they're from Asian culture, they could have done a few different ones done in the style of a few main cultures in BC. Have one Asian inspired design, one First Nation inspired design, European inspired design, and so on..
I am not saying that we don't have a large Asian community in Vancouver, because we certainly do. I just don't think that this fairly represents BC as a hugely diverse Province that we are.

I think they are very well done and quite interesting but they don't really represent Canada or BC that well. They will most likely attract a younger crowd though, so that is a good thing. They may put some people off a bit.

http://homefor2010.com

i love them so cute!
http://www.vancouverolympicsguide.com

no it's not from japanese amines, it's from your imagination!!