Mermaid Linden Character
Posted Under: Updates | Written by James Prola
A Professional Mermaid
Mermaid Linden is the world’s leading professional mermaid and is a forerunner in child entertainment and education. We recently had the honor of partnering with her on a very special project. First, let me tell you a bit about the magic that Linden is up to. The world’s leading professional mermaid and is a forerunner in child entertainment and education.
As one of the top professional mermaids (over 1,000 in the US), Linden performs at events, participates in amazing life changing experience for Make a Wish Foundation, and runs a very popular youtube channel with over 37,000 subscribers containing videos with upwards of 10.5 million views. She has been featured in over 100 publications worldwide in more than 15 languages!
Our Partnership
We were approached to help Linden to help overcome an obstacle she was encountering with her popular video series called Mermaid Minutes. These short educational videos feature Mermaid Linden swimming with sea creatures and teaching the audience about them. One massive challenge is getting high quality live action footage of Linden interacting with the wide variety of animals across the World’s oceans. As you can imagine it costs a pretty penny to fly around with a professional underwater cinematographer.
Flexible Solution
The solution was to create a lookalike animated character of Mermaid Linden, then composite it over the live action footage so that both Linden and the animal can be present in the same shot. This cost effective solution really opened up the flexibility of each shot since we can create Mermaid Linden’s movement in post production. She can now interact with the sea creatures in limitless ways.
We were pleased to be able to accommodate the very aggressive budget while still exceeding expectations and providing a very comprehensive solution. Although the animation style is simplistic and isn’t necessarily at a commercial caliber, the results are just what she needs, a lively, interactive and engaging experience for her target demographic.
Designing the Character
This behind the scenes animation overviews the iterative illustration process that our very talented Elisabeth Koppa took will creating the cartoon version of Mermaid Linden. Several key items were essential to carry across in-order to fully capture Linden’s personality and look, such as the crescent tail fin, the color of her tail and clams, the star fish in the hair, and of course her long beautiful hair and bubbly blue eyes!
Looking Ahead
There are several episodes already published that feature the animated Mermaid Linden character…and much more to come! We’re also looking forward to seeing the various applications of the character. Rumor has it, she will appear on the brand product line that Linden created in association with Body Glove!