Absent-minded zoologist Lionel Peabody has enlisted the help of Bugsley the Bloodhound in an attempt to track down the elusive Pink-Spotted Mountain Cat. By far the rarest of rare cats, the Pink-Spotted has never actually been fully sighted, only occasional glimpses of a tail sticking out from behind a boulder or ears peaking out from above a bush. Using the scent from what was believed to be a recent kill, Buglsey got the faintest of scents from the remains of the bird and set off on the trail.
In this article I’m going to break down the steps in creating the above cartoon.
Sketching the background
I sketched out a mountain ridge for the background using the 6b pencil in Procreate.
Sketching the characters
Here is Lionel Peabody (the absent-minded zoologist) and Bugsley the Bloodhound.
Positioning the characters on the background
I wanted to have a them on the right-hand side so that it left some space free in case I wanted to add the cat. I wasn’t sure at this stage whether it would actually appear in the cartoon (it is elusive after all…)
Adding washes to the background
The used the watercolour tool set to 20% opacity to start to build up the tones.
Adding washes to the characters
Using the same watercolour tool, I now applied washes to the characters.
Adding shadow
Adding a little shadow to ground the characters.
Increasing the intensity of the tones
I double the layer containing the characters washes, and added more tones to the background. I also decided to add the cat peering up at the pair as they went past, and failed to find it as usual.
The finished cartoon
Here is the finished cartoon again. I say finished, however, I might add a little more detail. I was Laos thinking of doing a colour version, although I do like the atmosphere created by monochrome.
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