‘With his devilish claws and sharp jagged teeth’ is a line in the book which gives a brief description of Clancy to instil fear about this particular character. This meant I had to specifically create claws and teeth that match up to this statement. Below are some of the ideas I came up with.
Again, keeping in mind the words jagged, sharp, spiky, and pointy, I came up with these ears below that I could use for Clancy Cat.
Developing a shape that makes the cat look both cunning and scary was difficult to achieve. I kept in mind that using jagged edges and sharp points in all of clancys features will result in him looking more intimidating.
Below are some of the possible head shapes for Clancy.
I began the design process for Clancy by sketching various different body shapes that came to mind. I took inspiration from different designs and really like the idea of Clancy having a huge exaggerated arch in his back to give the impression he is prowling and lurking.
I aim to design Clancy in a way that he will look very scary, yet still suitable for a children’s book.
I know that finalising Clancy Cat soon is very important. To date he is the character I have put the least of my time into, so I plan on spending this week working on him. I broke down the attributes that make up Clancy and decided to focus individually on these features and then pick on my favourite ones at the end of my experimentation.
Rubys character is a mix of the individually drawn features created for her. I used a slick stroke along her outline and added some light shading around her, which will change in each scene depending on her place on each page.
I like the idea of having an ‘S’ style design to Ruby Robin, that makes the illustration flow. I sketched Ruby robin, according to all of the individual sketches I created separately. I chose my favourite attributes about her, such as wings, beak, legs, eyes etc..
The wings that came to mind while sketching were quite delicate and elegant in their flow. I enjoyed using different strokes while illustrating.
Some funny designs came to mind for the character of Ruby. I wanted to be creative and make the legs different to the typical ones used in common cartoons. Again, I drew out ideas first and dragged them into Adobe Illustrator where I brought them to life.
For designing the beak of Ruby, I followed the same process of sketch to illustration. I took inspiration for beaks from different bird cartoons that came to mind from my childhood and combined different ideas with these. Again, I selected my favourite few to illustrate and played around with some different strokes in illustrator also.
Amy O' Reilly 