Another fun point about these designs are the characters. Setting a precedent with the first calendar
of hiding well-known characters and celebrities, the client wanted to maintain this as an extra fun element and occasional
challenge for prizes. The elements I always include are: A U.S. president, various celebrities, a superhero, one or more athletes,
one or more groups of characters (such as a rock band), an anime character, a video game character, celebrities who passed
away that year, and The Beatles (an employee request)!
I also always tried to use appropriate characters and persons to match the theme of the whole image, i.e. mostly sci-fi characters
on the space calendar, western actors and characters on the western calendar (which included some subtle references such as
"Kid Rock" for a musical celebrity- known for his hit "Cowboy" and the anime character "Cowboy Bebop"), aquatic or sea-faring
characters for the cruise-ship calendar (such as the famous movie pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, Ariel "The Little Mermaid"
and Tom Sawyer), and Disney characters for the fairy tale calendar (some of which were used "as is" and some of which were
mixed with celebrities).
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