The Schnoo is a curious looking animal, which is appropriate that it is in fact a very curious animal.
If it is said that curiously killed the cat, then the Schnoo would have had multiple lives ended due to its incessant exploring and interest in all around it.
I’ve started to creature a new character, indeed a new creature - The Schnoo. In this article I’m going to go through the creative process of coming up with this new comical critter.
How I came up with the idea
The Schnoo started popping into existence when I was mulling over what creatures were more curious than a cat? I then started thinking about creating the most curious of all creatures and what it would look like.
I set about doodling some character studies to explore what it would look like.
At first I wasn’t sure what the creature’s final form would take, however one thing I wanted to incorporate right from the beginner was a curly tail shaped like a question mark. I thought it would literally represent its questioning nature.
At this point the head is kind of resembling that of a fox or some other dog. This may have been because I was watching the documentary ‘The Biggest Little Farm’, which featured some coyotes which were proving to be a bit of a problem.
However, I started explored exploring more interesting muzzle shapes, and so basing it on a dog was left behind.
I was now exploring having a long nose, the idea being that it could poke it into spaces and sniff things out. I thought a long nose looked funny, however, this create a slight problem in that a long nose would take up a lot of space on the page. To solve this I came up with the idea of having the nose curled up like an elephants trunk, and so the nose turned into a kind of trunk. I also liked the fact that the shape of the nose/trunk now echoed that of the tail, repeating the question mark motiff.
Now that I had a rough ide of how the head and body would look like, I thought I’d explore some Schnoo variants.
I wanted to doodle some different heads, based on having a trunk. I drew a bunch of heads, varying them slightly each time. I can’t say that any of the above really grabbed me.
What’s Next?
From Schnoos to Schnauzers…and Snakes to Sausages Dogs…You name it - I can draw it for you!
There’s also a whole host of other critters that feature in my Cartoon Newsletter. Add your amend best email address to the orange box below and I’ll wing a copy your way.