A Duck That Doesn’t Go Quack

I’m going to go through how I got the idea for the above cartoon and how a pair of crocodiles ended up selling ice cream.

I’m currently doing the Da Vinci cartooning course. One of the assignments this week was to rework a scene from Benji Davies’ The Storm Whale. Here I’ve swapped out the original human characters for a pair of giraffes.

After I was looking over the picture and thought it would be cool to have something emerge out of the sea and onto the beach…

I then stumbled on this old family photo of me aged 8 at Hunstanton beach standing next to a DUKW amphibious truck from WWII.

They used to use them on the beach to take people out to see the seals which would be basking on a nearby sandbank. I used to think the DUKW was really, really cool. (I still do!). So I thought that would be the perfect vehicle to emerge from the sea.

As I started to draw it Its shape reminded me of a crocodile, so I thought why not have a crocodile driving it?

At this point I hadn’t come up with a reason for it pulling up onto the beach, but then I thought such a vehicle would be ideal for selling ice cream on remote beaches where it’s difficult for more conventional ice cream vans to reach.

Do you want some help with your own cartooning? Or perhaps you’d like me to create an original cartoon you. Get in touch and let me know how I can help you.