Doubt It Duck Character Design

Project Overview We're building an animated cartoon mascot for Doubt It — a card and digital trivia game where every answer is a percentage and bluffing is the whole point. The mascot is the Doubt It Duck: an overconfident cartoon duck in a bow tie who stands at a branded game show podium, makes a wildly confident percentage guess, and is comedically proven wrong every single time. He always guesses too high. He is always wrong. That gap — between total confidence and total incorrectness — is the entire character. This Duck will be the face of an autonomous Instagram Reels series producing 3 episodes per week, and will appear across the and brand ecosystem. Visual Identity & Color Direction The Doubt It brand uses a clean, bold, playful illustration style — modern card game aesthetics with strong silhouettes, saturated colors, and characters that read instantly at small sizes (think the illustrated cupcakes and dolphins already used in the physical game's marketing). The Duck is blue. Specifically, a vivid, saturated medium blue — not pastel, not navy. Think "cartoon duck in a swimming pool" blue. This matches the Doubt It brand color palette used across and , where a strong blue anchors the visual identity alongside bold complementary accents. Style register: Modern 2D cartoon illustration. Thick, confident outlines. Flat color fills with clean shading — not painterly, not hyper-realistic. Think contemporary animated character design that works at both 40px icon size and 1080×1920 vertical video. The GIF references provided show the energy we're after: expressive, rubbery, fun, and instantly readable. Pixar-adjacent personality but simplified for 2D. Bow tie: A contrasting accent color — red, yellow, or teal all work against the blue body. Your call, but it should pop and feel game-show-ready. Podium: Slightly over-the-top game show set piece energy. Not corporate. The Doubt/it! logo (provided on hire) sits on the podium face. Character Personality Unearned confidence is his entire personality He's never embarrassed until the real answer appears — then he crumbles completely Charming, not annoying — audiences root for him even though he's always wrong Think cartoon game show host who is absolutely certain he's right, always Bow tie, podium, theatrical gestures — he commits fully every time Required Deliverables 1. Character Reference Sheet Full turnaround: front, 3/4, and side profile. This is the master anchor image for AI video generation — it will be fed into Kling AI's character consistency API hundreds of times. A thorough reference sheet is the single most important deliverable in this project. Inconsistent reference = inconsistent character at scale. 2. Eight Expression States (isolated, pose + expression per state) #StateDescription 1 Confident Default podium stance, slight smile, one hand resting on podium 2 Smug Arms crossed or finger to chin, eyebrow raised, very pleased with himself 3 Thinking Exaggerated concentration — finger to bill, eyes narrowed, completely overthinking it 4 Shocked Eyes wide, jaw dropped, feathers ruffled — just saw the real answer 5 Deflated Shoulders slumped, head drooping, existential sadness, possibly a single tear 6 Exploding Maximum chaos — feathers flying, full cartoon meltdown energy 7 Celebrating Arms up, huge grin — for the rare moment he's vindicated 8 Pointing at Viewer Direct address to camera, peak confidence, "and what do YOU think?" energy 3. Podium Design The branded game show podium, with Doubt/it! logo on the face. Should work as a standalone asset and combined with the Duck at full height. 4. Color Palette Documentation Hex codes for all character and podium colors for downstream brand consistency. File Deliverables Vector source files (SVG or AI) for all assets High-res PNGs — minimum 2000px on longest edge, transparent backgrounds Reel-ready vertical crops of all 8 expressions sized for 1080×1920 (Duck + podium, centered with headroom and bottom padding) Organized, clearly named folder structure Budget $400–$600 USD fixed rate, paid in full on delivery of approved finals. Timeline 2–3 weeks from project start. How to Apply Please share your portfolio, 2–3 examples most relevant to this style, availability, and any questions. Bonus points for games, brand mascots, or animation work. Shortlisted candidates hear back within 48 hours. Work for hire, including purchase of all IP rights. Doubt It is a card game and digital platform by Rook and Board Games, LLC — |