The challenge was creating characters and an entire world that would identify with Arizona children ages 0-12. The Marketing Director and I knew we wanted to choose desert animals as mascots, and we settled on an Ocelot and Mountain Lion.

From there, I started sketching the character in Adobe Illustrator, even though I'd created very few characters before that day. I chose colors and exaggerated landscape shapes heavily inspired by the Sonoran Desert's natural beauty. I presented my Pounce and Paws characters to the Marketing Director, and went to work on the collateral as soon as they were approved.

We went on to create seasonal coloring sheets and stories about how Pounce the Ocelot and Paws the Mountain Lion learn about money management. I even created an interactive card game (that never launched) and animated frame-by-frame illustrations with the launch of each new story. I also created a mini library of illustrated iconography for the new Pounce Accounts landing page.

Pounce Accounts was an immediate success, resulting in over 1,000 new memberships in just the first year. Children pose with the Pounce cardboard cutouts at their local branches and love to share photos of their finished coloring sheets on their parent's social media.