The origins of the Finnish glider can be traced back to noted ski-jumper, Markku Krazinnen.
Markku was accompanied everywhere by his faithful dog Mitski, a medium-sized dog of indiscriminate breed, who had unusually loose skin.
Everyday Mitski would follow Markku to the ski jump for his practice. On one particular morning, Mitski ventured onto the top of the slope, and unable to get a grip on the slippery surface, began to slide down.
Mitski built up considerable speed, and upon reaching the end of the slope, became the first dog to launch themself off a ski jump. Now airborne, the loose skin between Mitski’s legs and body, got filled out by the wind to form a kind of wing, similar to that observed in flying squirrels. Moments after the start of this pioneering fight, Mitski successfully landed, although unfortunately there were no judges around to award her a score for technical excellence or artistic merit.
Fascinated by the potential of creating the word’s first flying canine, Krazinnen dedicated the rest of his life to creating the breed.
Today I’m going to talk through the process of creating this cartoon.
Pictured above is the finished cartoon. I’m now going to break down how I came up with the idea and the step-by-step process of drawing it.
I draw all my current cartoons on an iPad Pro using Procreate.
At the end of this article, there’s also a couple of cartooning tips.
But before I get started with the drawing, how did the idea come about in first place?
I have a lot of fun coming up with new dog breeds, such as the red-spotted Dalmatian, and the Extended Dachshund. Amongst this collection of canine curiosities is the Siberian Greyhound pictured above, which I came up with a couple of years ago. This same pic helped inspired another cartoon, but that’s a story for another day.
Anyway, seeing the Greyhound towing the snowboard, it started me thinking about skiiing, which resulted in ski jumping popping into mind.
I pondered how a dog could follow it’s owner off the ski jump (as you do…) and that got me thinking that the dog would need some wings of some sort.
It was while pondering flying animals, that all the images in my rather-jumbled mind were joined by one of a flying squirrel.
In Japan, these are known as Momonga, and some are resident at Mount Takao, which is about an hour away from where I live in Tokyo. However, as flying squirrels are nocturnal and only come out at night, I yet to see one.
Anyway, I thought what if you could have a flying dog?…..and the Finnish Glider was born.
Momonga flying squirrel never actually managed to see one because they come out at night
Initial rough sketch
This rough sketch was done with a digital 6B pencil
Inking the characters
All of my digital cartoons are built up in a series of layers. I keep them separate, rather than merge them together, so that I can use them again in future cartoons if I want to.
Adding the background outline
I liked the idea of the ski jumper and dog pointing up, while the line of the mountain range is sloping downwards.
Colouring the background
I coloured the background using a series of washes. First of all I applied some purple, using 20% opacity.
Next I added a layer of grey washes, again setting it at 20% and building up the tones.
Here are the two layers shown together.
Shown separately here is a layer of detail to add more depth to the mountain.
And here are all the background layers shown together.
Adding the sky
I thought I would keep the sky a simple uniform blue, as I didnt’ want any clouds to distract away from the jumpers.
Colouring the characters
As I wnatsed the attention to fall on the dog, I coloured in the jumper using a muted blue, which slightly blends him with both the mountain and the sky.
The dog is a brighter colour, that stand out against both the background and sky, but also the jumper. His red tongue sticking out particularly catches the eye.
Here’s the finished cartoon again
I added a few movement lines and that’s that.
Cartoon Tip
Building up a background as a series of layers can really add a lot of depth to your picture. An easy way to increase the depth of tone is simply to duplicate one of the layers.
Cartoon Idea Tip
What other winter sports could you have a play around with to generate some possible ideas?
Here are a few to think about
ice hockey
curling
ice skating
bobsleigh
cross-country skiiing
What’s next
I’m currently working away at the ‘Story Telling for Cartoon Strips Course’. If you’d like to find out more details, and also receive my Cartoon Newsletter, add your name and mail to the orange box below.
Happy Tooning!
