The idea for the cartoon was sparked off by an image that my Aunt sent in a Christmas email. I thought, ‘hmm…maybe there’s an exception….”
And so I came up with the character of ‘Fast Red.’
Initial outline
Here’s the outline that I came up with. I added a pair of racing goggles to the squirrel.
Colouring the car
As it was a red squirrel with the name of ‘Fast Red’, I thought it only natural to colour the car red.
Colouring the character
I used the studio pen in Procreate, set at 30% opacity to colour the character. You can see the palette I used above the car.
However, when I finished the character, I thought it might be more striking to colour the car a different colour to add more of a contrast. This conjured up an image of green racing car with red highlights.
Here’s an old Alfa Romeo racing car from 1985.
It’s an old painting trick to add some red to the greens to make them seem greener, so I thought I’d try the same idea out with the squirrel and car.
Here’s the repainted car. However, it looked way too static to me, and so I wanted to try and catch the car in motion.
I recoloured the car. This time I didn’t use solid colour, instead I set the brush to 30% opacity and pained the car in a series of streaks.
I applied the same approach to colouring the road.
And finally for the background.
Here’s the finished cartoon again.
What’s next?
I put out a Cartoon Newsletter containing a whole host of characters and occasional cartooning tips. Add your name and mail to the orange box below and I’ll wing a copy your way.