Childrens' Laureate Michael Morpurgo - a person who must be known somewhere by someone - came up with the concept of the Olympic mascots being fashioned from two drops of molten steel split in the making of the last steel girder used in the Olympic Stadium.
An animated film, which will form part of a series, depicts a grandfather forming the steel into the figures and giving them to his grandchildren. Animated by a rainbow they turn somersaults for the children before disappearing off on the road to London.
Wen and Mandy, formally known as Wenlock and Mandeville, are aimed at a child audience and (Lord) Sebastian Coe makes no apology. "We've created our mascots for children and they will connect young people with sport and tell the story of our proud Olympic and Paralympic history."
That's the children sorted with what will be excessively priced future junk. What about the adults? Fancy trying a design? You can send your efforts to the Telegraph. Do ensure it can be placed on the mantlepiece along with my royal memorabilia which is all quality china. I suppose an ashtray isn't politically correct these days. Shame.
source (some of the comments are fun)
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11 comments:
Mike Murpurgo is an eminent childrens author who's work is highly respected. One of his The War Horse has made it onto stage in Londistan.
That aside, more nonsense for our consumer society to quaff to pay for these games, wonder how the games in Glasgow will be paid for.....,
CD
As I have little or nothing to do with children's books CD I had never heard of him. He may be part of the elite authors specialising in that area.
Apologies if you feel I've insulted the man. That wasn't my intention.
I think he just designed the conceptual backstory for these abomi- err, wonderful examples of UK creative effort, didn't he?
Whatever, they are indeed awful, but given the logo debacle, is anyone surprised?
I have commented elsewhere to the effect that surely some American firm must have trade marked things like this for some reason? It might be worth the hunt to find them and point the company in the direction of their lawyers. That would be an event worth watching.
Michael Morpugo wrote Private Peaceful I think. I don't know if that was a children's book but it was brilliant.
That would be interesting indeed Demetrius. I read somewhere it was nigh impossible to find out how much the designers were paid though, far less anything else.
It looks like I will have to look into the works of Mr Morpugo naturalnoble and move from my present state of ignorance.
"I read somewhere it was nigh impossible to find out how much the designers were paid though, far less anything else."
Angry Exile has a figure of £400,000 from the 'Times'...
Hi Julia, I saw that in the Times then I read somewhere else that Seb was keeping it a secret so I decided it's possibly a lot more than £400,000 don't you think? Somehow I feel the production costs have been omitted and all the 'models' would have been very costly.
Hi SR
Seen these somewhere before, or extremely similar,in a cartoon strip,Just cant remember where, but with my memory nowadays..,.,!
Join the club Apogee. :) I too think I've seen something like them. They're certainly not unique.
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