Roar! - How a Drawing Evolves

I have finished my swinging duckling illustration:

This page sits opposite the illustration for 'R' - a baby tiger, trying out his roaring on a butterfly - the next piece I have decided to colour up. Below is the original rough I submitted to Egmont. Though there were minor changes to other illustrations at that stage, the tiger came back as an immediate green light, with no changes needed.

But later, taking a fresh look at the various roughs, I realised that the tiger would be more fun in a dressing-up outfit, like the squirrel, so I gave him a little superhero cape, and re-submitted the drawing to my editor.

They pointed out that the cape was a bit minimal and so got a little lost. They suggested I give him a T-shirt as well, perhaps with some kind of superhero picture on the front. This seemed a good idea. I thought for a moment, then realised the simplest idea would be the Superman logo:

Even as I was drawing it, I worried about copyright - you have to be very careful how you use existing logos. But the design worked really well, so I decided to see if Egmont picked it up as an issue. They did. Ah well.

Sarah, my designer on Baby Goes Baaaa! sent me this lovely tiger-superhero logo she designed herself, and asked me to give that a try. I took into Photoshop, shrunk it down and manipulated it so that it 'sat' on the rounded front of the shirt properly.

The logo was fabulous but, because of the limited space on the front of the T-shirt, and the fact that some was hidden under the tiger's chin, it didn't really work that well. It was also slightly fiddly once reduced to fit:

Back to the drawing board (literally). If we couldn't use an existing superhero logo on the T-shirt, and we couldn't use something as complex as Sarah's illustration, I thought perhaps we needed to rethink. Did it have to be a superhero T-shirt? Children put together their own dressing-up costumes far more often that they buy ready-made ones. I tried a simple, but very recognisable symbol: a star.

Which seemed to do the trick nicely and, luckily, the folks at Egmont agreed. This is how it looks so far in colour, still missing his little stripes and his butterfly friend:

I didn't get much done yesterday, because of my regular teaching slot at the university, but I aim to get it finished this morning if possible.