Space Prawn Mascot Ideas

These are early concepts I worked up for a recent commission to design a mascot for a prawn fishing restaurant in Guangzhou, China. The idea is that the customers sit around a pool full of prawns, crab and lobster and fish for their dinner. The owner initially was looking for an illustrated mascot or logo idea featuring a prawn riding in a spaceship and fishing for stars. The English translation of the name of the restaurant is Prawn Star Man Prawn Fishing Restaurant - 虾星人钓虾馆。Eventually we went in a different direction but these initial sketches were a lot of fun. I had a few mad ideas about prawn space kraken that didn't go any where as evidenced on the sketchbook pages I have included with this post. My research was quite varied, I started out looking at a lot of rubber hose cartoons for inspiration, and then looney tunes and Jetsons type stuff - Marvin the Martian was a big influence early on. The client wasn't that keen and said they wanted a more contemporary feel - like Pokemon - which lead me to look at Japanese video game art and comics from the 80 and 90s - especially the underwater characters from the Rockman/Megaman series.