Sawubona to Zakumi!
Say hello to Zakumi! A "jolly, self-confident, adventurous, spontaneous, and actually quite shrewd little fellow", and the official mascot of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
He's a 12-year-old leopard sporting the green and gold colours of Bafana Bafana, and who at one time "decided to dye his hair green as he felt it would be the perfect camouflage against the green of the football pitch". See him in action here.
Zakumi - a Mascot with attitude, via FIFA.com:
The name "Zakumi" is a composition of "ZA" standing for South Africa and "kumi", which translates into "10" in various languages across Africa.
Zakumi was born in 1994 and will be sixteen in 2010 - as young as South Africa's democracy.
Again via FIFA.com, Official Mascot unveiled:
The original creator of the design is Andries Odendaal from Cape Town, and the mascot costume itself was produced by Cora Simpson of Cora's Costumes cc in Boksburg. "Zakumi is a proud South African and, as such, an ideal ambassador for the first African World Cup." explained Danny Jordaan.
I know Andries as a fellow interactive designer and developer - he was the huge talent behind Wireframe back in the early days of new media establishment in South Africa and more recently consulted for HIVE. He has received wide spread recognition for his work (check out Whizzball for example) and is considered one of the foremost Flash and Director developers in the world. Congrats dude, another feather in your cap!
Zakumi is by far the best FIFA World Cup mascot when you consider his predecessors, or as arbitraryuser put it so well, "breakfast cereal characters". It's also nice to see the mascot fully dressed again. ;)
Read more at IHT.com: Leopard Zakumi leaps into World Cup spotlight
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12 Comments
way to go!!!!!!
Yeah I can grow to like it :)
Why though at the launch did Zakumi have some blondy brown fuzzy wig and not funky green hair like above?
@Mark: I was watching the live reveal, it was pretty bad. There was this one guy that kept entering the stage at the wrong times and the cameras would focus on him each time – a good laugh actually.
Yeah, not such a big fan of the costume though. Sorry Cora’s Costumes cc. :P
I’m sorry but my vote goes for “Naranjito” the smiling Orange (Spain ‘84)
Yeah the applause in that Zoopy video when the mascot was revealed was pathetic. Lol. Barely a cheer.
He is starting to grow on me didn’t like it at first, so we will see
He looks pretty decent, I think. Could have been much worse!
Zakumi created work for 6 extra Grannies who inherited grandchildren when the mothers passed away. People were taught skills how to use templates & applique textiles. Ready made textiles to difficult designs are not available. It is easy to draw a soccerball spot, but it needs skills to manufacture it. Every bit on all 10 mascots are handmade by a staff of 30. All were unskilled & taught by Cora;s Costumes, sorather look at the positive & not the negative.
I dig it, much better then the event logo IMHO
Hey boi we are really enjoying your dance keep it up zakumi wabantwana!
i lov it, i lov it, i lov it!!! representing young zim designers, i believe the character has potential
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23 September 2008
David03:05 am
Like it. Congrats to Andries…