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The Flyers unveiled on Monday the team's new brilliant and fluffy mascot, Gritty, and it's safe to say he's already a fan.
There are some fans of the Flyers who have no taste and who are not Gritty fans – they are people you think twice before inviting you home. And then, there are kind and generous people like me who simply can not do without the orange hairy man falling on the ice.
One of the questions the previous group seemed to ask collectively was: who in the world invented this thing?
The answer is designer and illustrator Brian Allen, a Penn State graduate living in Pennsylvania, who was hired by the Flyers to conceptualize the mascot and illustrate it from scratch.
Another popular issue among Gritty's detractors (again, horrible people) seemed to be, "If that's what they landed on, what could they refuse?"
Allen actually shared some of his early sketch concepts and included a pilot, bulls, brutes, bats, dragons, wolves, flying squirrels, marmots and various monsters, among others. All but two of the NHL teams already have mascots, the species were limited. The monsters have allowed more creativity and flexibility.
I asked him if he had a favorite among the first drafts.
"You tend to attach to everyone because you created them, and the one they chose was, thankfully, one of my favorites," he said.
He first became involved in July and went through two phases. There have been two weeks of sketching different ideas to explore the 25 or so concept sketches mentioned above. Then, once the team pointed it in the final direction of the monster, there were two more weeks of focus with multiple sketches from different angles.
It was at this point that Gritty's creation was in the hands of the costume company.
The last Gritty was finally introduced to the world after Allen worked there for months and seeing the big orange monster in nature was an amazing experience.
"It was really exciting to see physically.I have designed a lot of mascots before, but never for a suit.It was the first time that one of my illustrations was coming alive." you look at my illustrations, there are a lot of things that turned out to be different, a lot of things that I drew could not be functional in real life, "Allen told NBCSportsPhiladelphia.com.
And there were exciting additions to the costume that he had not exactly planned.
Like googly eyes.
Meet Gritty. pic.twitter.com/JrTT628Vce
– Christina Betz (@StinaBetz) September 24, 2018
"I wanted them to be buggy eyes for sure," Allen said. "But I never told them that they should move like that, I do not know who came with that, I did not know it was happening, but I think it adds a lot of movement and life to him."
The Flyers have drawn Brian and his family with tickets for a game and he can not wait to see Gritty in action even though fans' reactions are mixed.
"The reaction of the fans has been interesting because it's something that is dear to the hearts of the fans, so there are visceral reactions," Allen said. "I hope the fans will love the mascot with time, I'm really happy."
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