More animals for character design!
The categories we had to choose from were as follows:
Dinosaurs, cats, primates, large animals, forest animals, farm animals, bears, horses, insects, human/animal morphs, and mythical creatures. We had to choose three to do (but I did four...so shoot me.)

Now, this design makes me giggle to myself because of how it was received by my class...Now please please don't think I am tooting my own horn. I'm just telling you what happened m'kay?

See, I haven't drawn a tiger for awhile, so I decided to draw a one, right? I wanted to do him a little more stylized than I normally go, so I tried. And with the stripes I was going to do really thick ones, but something made me go with thin, tattoo-inspired stripes. Instinct told me they fit the character/design better. And I liked how it turned out, so yeah. But I didn't think this was anything especially...special lol. But I guess I was wrong...?

Well, when my picture was posted up on the wall, people started freaking out. Seriously. There was one kid who was like "That is so hot! I freaking hate you!" and he went on like that for pretty much the rest of class. But people seemed to really like it. I was genuinely surprised because honestly I am torn. I mean its all right, but it wasn't my favorite design ever...I dunno. It just doesn't strike me as being brilliant like it seemed to strike everyone else.

Ryan (my teacher) even, as my friend put it, "gushed" over it. I mean he really loved it. And its kinda rare for him not to have a single critique. (The only real critique I got was to bring the back toe out a little further so you can see it better behind the tail.) I dunno if I've ever seen him get so excited over a single design before. We have been putting together an "Art of BYU Animation" book for quite awhile now and he said that THIS is the quality of stuff they were looking for and that this picture was cover-worthy. People really just kept going on and on about stuff from how it isn't just a Shere-khan clone but a unique character, to the personality, to the tattoo/modern look, to how smooth it was and more.

The smoothness/crispness of it was actually really funny. I do all of my work in photoshop, k? Sometimes I do it from start to finish in photoshop, other times I sketch it on paper and scan it, but for this one it was start to finish. People couldn't believe it was all raster lines and no vectors. I don't really know enough about vectors to do anything decent, so I never use them. I draw all my lines with my little 3"X4" tablet. My teacher asked if I used a cintiq (one of those freaking awesome tablet/screen combos which I would kill for lolz) and I was like, no, just a tablet. Even he was surprised. So Im gonna make a tutorial to show people my method because they all asked me to.

And to top it all off, when we were done looking at it, everyone APPLAUDED. I about died. I just hid my face and shook my head. It was ridiculous. Its not that special people, really. I was just...in a state of disbelief. I really, really, REALLY was NOT expecting that at ALL.

I will say that it definitely boosted my confidence. The past couple of weeks I have been VERY frustrated with myself and have felt like I really don't have any special talent. That I can never make it in the art world. I guess I needed a day like this to slap me in the face and both humble and lift me. I CAN draw. Im NOT perfect, but when I really put the work into it, I can come up with some good stuff.

Ahhhhh isn't life funny? I still have a lot to work on, but that's just it. WORKING on stuff = improvement. So happy day? lol

art/character (c) me