After attempting to draw a cat on a graphics tablet and failing, I’ve decided to look into existing cat characters – including how they are drawn.
Within the picture book cats I have found, there is the look of being hand-drawn which seems to work best for the look of the cat. Some are more detailed than others, for example ‘Tabby McTat’ has a lot more detail and texture than ‘Splat the Cat’ but I feel they are all still quite well detailed and not simplistic. I have felt like I will definitely have to hand draw my cat to make it unique, however, the examples of film/tv cats shows that an ‘animated/cartoon’ cat still looks good. Although these were perhaps hand-drawn first, they don’t have that sketch look I feel I will need to achieve. I like the simplicity of the siamese cats, which may not seem simple at first glance, but with the block/filled in colouring method they wouldn’t be too difficult. I was aiming to avoid using a black outline around my illustrations but I feel I will need it as a guide that I will end up keeping as it will look neater. If I attempt to make my cat on Photoshop again, from a hand drawn, line art version that I make – this will allow it to be unique but also still have the cartoon look I want.
