Ratha WIP Sample: Ratha Threatened by Threehorn

I feel a little bad that I haven't uploaded Ratha Challenge art this month. My current work has revolved around the visually mundane, but nonetheless important task of making consistent, proportionate, realistic characters. I've been studying cat anatomy, from skeletons to deep muscles to superficial muscles and pelts. I've been going back to our character designs to check their anatomy against what I've learned. And because we get to see Ratha grow up throughout this story, we're carefully planning her physical development (I gotta admit, this part is *really* fun!).

Sooo... here's a take on the scene in the first sample panel that I reworked last fall. I like Ratha's body language and expression, but I already realized my interpretation of her is too mature for when this scene takes place. She's still got a lot of growing up to do!

I also want to point you to a really useful tool when photoshop-style painting (Image to Color Palette Generator):
[link]

I found some images of redwood forests that had the colors I wanted to work in, dropped them into this magic generator, and got a set of swatches to put in my Color Swatches folder (on my Mac it's located in /Users/me/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop Elements 9/Presets). I still create and add new colors, but this gives me a nice range (a.k.a. gamut) to work in.

**Our Kickstarter campaign to create a graphic novel version of Ratha's Creature is still on! [link] **