Anthology character swap

Or, how to draw a cartoon tiger

Since I finished my story for the Kids Comics Unite anthology (kickstarting on April 22), I've been getting more involved in the marketing side.

My KCU colleague, Patrick Lugo, suggested doing a character swap to promote the anthology and cross-pollinate our work with each other's audiences. Patrick offered to make a drawing of Solaa while I'd draw someone from his series, A Tiger's Tale. Challenge accepted!

I couldn't decide on a single character from Patrick's rich story so I chose the tiger Kan and his adopted human brothers:

From A Tiger's Tale, courtesy of Patrick Lugo

This was a great opportunity to lean into my discomfort zone since I hadn't drawn someone else's characters (or a tiger) before.

Roughs

My strategy was to work as quickly as possible and outrun that perfectionist voice. I started by looking up examples of tiger coloring and striping on Pinterest. I wanted to draw the tiger curling up with his humans so I also looked up housecat poses.

A gratuitous photo of my boy Calcifer.

It took some effort to draw a tiger that I liked. In my early sketches he wound up looking more a cat, kitten, or even a bear. What helped was to flatten the tiger's head and play up the floofy fur behind his jaw. Then I worked on a lounge-y pose (starting with a housecat, lengthening the torso, and adding bigger shoulders).

The rough sketch that became the final drawing.

Inks

I scanned the rough sketch and started inking right away. Adding the tiger's stripes (which I had put off until this step) turned out to be a "less is more" exercise, laying down enough lines to suggest stripes without going overboard, especially around the head and face.

After that, this step went quickly, the human brothers needing only minor tweaks.

Finished ink drawing.

Color

I spent a lot of time figuring out where the tiger's orange fur ended and the white fur began - especially in the tail. Tiger tails have more white fur than I’d expected but, in a cartoon setting, it just looked odd. (This is probably thanks to Disney movies - I'm looking at you, Tigger and Shere Khan.) So I kept this guy's tail mostly orange.

For the humans, I adapted Patrick's original palette but brightened it for a more cartoony vibe. Again, they came along quickly.

The final product! At Patrick's suggestion I tweaked the brother on the right, adding "ears" and a "tail" to his hairstyle.

This was a fun challenge (like drawing a 4-panel comic)! I'm glad I was able to work fast, outrun the perfectionist voice, and push myself outside my comfort zone. I want to bring the same feeling to the next project(s) - more short stories from the Solaa-verse. More about those in a future post(s).

In the meantime, you can support the Kids Comics Unite anthology here and order Patrick’s A Tiger's Tale here!