This is a one year late reply.
I have been developing a system to remember the pronunciation of Chinese characters.
It consists of:
A. The “consonant”, which is a Disney Movie (Tarzan, Lion King, Pinocchio, etc.)
B. The tone, which is a character of the movie. And it works as follows: 1st tone, main male character; 2nd main female character; 3rd the evil guy; 4th other characters.
C. The rest of the character is a trade or a job, which includes an activity and an environment.
So P is the movie Pinocchio, T is Tangled, N is peter paN, F is Fantasia (Mickey Mouse), X is the Xuord in the Stone, etc.
While using Chinese usually I have problems remembering A and B, but not C, so often I don’t use C. So, I have less practice with this part.
For instance, yesterday while reading a came across these two words: 毯子 海灘. I know they are TAN, but I always forget the tone. So, I look at the dictionary, and see 毯 is 3rd and 灘 is 1st. So, I imagine the evil character in the movie Tangled playing with a blanket (as usual, the more exaggerated the better), and then the male character in the beach.
I didn’t include the AN part because I don’t have problems remembering that, but just for the record is a construction worker building a wall.
I don’t think this is “overkilling”, I have tried other simpler methods without success, and this one definitively works for me.
In order to get acquainted with the movie characters, I found in the web many useful images with all the male, female and evil characters in the same image.
The tone according to movie character is useful, because, for instance, the 2nd tone is always a female, so, it is easy to remember and recall. Also the movie characters are full of colour, they have voice, even songs and a story. I think this is an advantage over the system of the link above.
I have another system for writing character which involves personae from the Lord of the Rings.
Pixar characters are used in another system in which I am memorizing some key concepts from a book.
Thanks