Felix was in the middle of one of his aeronautical jaunts when he started to feel a bit peckish. He decided to put his seaplane down by a nearby coast and to catch something for lunch. While balancing on a float and attempting to get a fish to bite, Felix’s tail proved rather tempting for a nearby crab…
Introduction
After finishing the first version of the cartoon, the one appearing above, I knew immediately that it didn’t really work and needed some revision
In this article I’m going to look at how I improved the cartoon and show you a few ideas how you can help your character to stand out.
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
Overlapping
Above the horizon
Colours competing for attention
Overlapping
You can see here that both Felix and the crab, the two main key elements of the gag overlap the seaplane.
I needed to give both Felix and the crab more room to breath and to move them away from the seaplane. This led to the next version below.
Above the horizon line
Although Felix’s head was previously above the horizon line, in this version I’ve moved his entire body not just over the horizon line, but also above the cliff line. I’ve also moved the crab so that it’s also above the horizon line, with it’s eyes over the cliffs.
3. Colours competing for attention
I felt that the red nose of the seaplane was competing for attention with Felix and the crab, it was also merging too much with the crab. At first I thought I’d change the red to a green, however the green was still a little too bright and attention grabbing.
So I went for a uniform grey for the seaplane, leaving the orange of Felix and the red of the crab as the only bright colours. I probably could have toned down the blue of the sky a bit to rally help them the characters to stand out.
Here’s what we covered
Overlapping
Above the horizon line
Colours competing for attention.