The main Load characters have had some upgrades throughout the years and I thought it would be fun to post some of the progress here for you to see (and laugh at). The original characters were commissioned to be static characters that just sat on a page or the web and point at things of importance. So I was into gradient meshes at the time, and decided to create Guy (known at the time by the code name ‘TechGuy’) using the gradient meshing capabilities of Illustrator CS, at the time.

After the success of a tech guy character whose name was creatively changed to simply ‘Guy’, it was decided by the powers-that-be (PTB) that a girl character needed to be developed. We originally wanted to pattern her after that famous queen of istockphoto, Ewa that we used so frequently in our advertising. So now we had two little illustrated office workers who could point out the coolness of Load to you all day long.

But it wasn’t enough, the PTB then decreed that these two needed to be animated; we need toons. So the first toon was actually a version of the Steelers toon created a year before it aired online (we just never got around to putting it up). After a year, my flash abilities had significantly improved (the first Life of Guy cartoon was actually the second or so thing I’d ever made in Flash), and I updated the cartoon for the superbowl since our client the Steelers had actually made it and won! Go Steelers! So that worked out perfectly.

I originally was trying to animate the characters in Flash in their gradient mesh form. As those of you who use Flash know, you can’t do that very effectively at all because the meshes are converted to raster images and they animate like crap in flash. So Guy and Eva went through their first evolutionary phase and became straight up solid vector people. This worked out great and gave the toons an awesome new look.

After a little while, Guy and Eva seemed a bit homely looking so they received a newer look that brought them to where they are today. Eva probably had the most drastic changes, she went from blonde, to redhead, and a little stocky to a more slender build, and pasty I-work-indoors-all-day flesh tone to a nice tropical tan. In this new upgrade, radial and linear gradients were implemented instead of the old gradient meshes. After finally feeling comfortable with the use of gradients in Flash, the Life of Guy characters got that little added zing that makes them what they are today.

As the toons gained a popular following of kids, adults, geeks, total geeks, uber geeks and other demographic groups, the PTB suggested a radical new idea which had never been done before (I can't prove that, but I'll put $5 down). The idea was to implement new characters that were based on real people: The actual Load employees. I imagine other companies who realized they can be sued into oblivion by even risking this drastic new move have not taken the leap to something like this (probably smart - probably). But we here at Load, love each other and would never do anything like that. So the 2006 Thanksgiving toon "Turkey Trouble" became the first toon to feature every employee of Load, each character using their own real-life voice. The 2006 Christmas toon "Holiday Hijack" featured Jan, Adam, Nick, Christopher and Pat. The 2007 New Years cartoon featured everyone again as little mini baby versions of themselves (No risk of a lawsuit there). The Easter cartoon, "Road Trip" features Adam Rogas and Guy (who's voice is done by your's truly). Eva's voice is provided by the incredibly talented Evana Frederico, who just happens to have the name Eva in her first name!

So as for the future of the Life of Guy there's alot coming down the pipe. We hope to have some more exciting toons for this summer, t-shirts, figurines, DVDs of the toons, assault weapons, hats and a marshmallow cereal. Stay tooned, there's good stuff on the way!