This was a challenging assignment for myself but this character is important to my story. First, I researched otters from life and tried to find as many photos as possible of them and created a collage of these photos. I began sketching my references in my sketchbook as you can see from the first 3 photos. I was trying to pay attention to such important characteristics of what makes an otter an otter such as their elongated bodies, button nose, whiskers and long tail.
After several drawings, I tried to determine in my head who my character would be and what kind of clothes he would wear. I was thinking first that he would be a sailor and immediately I thought of Popeye and "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou". So I made some design choices to give him an orange sock hat similar to Bill Murray in that movie plus the orange would harmonize with the Steamboat Pirates that he belongs to. To keep the orange theme, I gave him a striped shirt similar to what sailors would normally wear and kept them orange. The checkered pattern also was something that I needed to incorporate into the design so I made it appear as a handkerchief that would be hanging out of the pocket of his pants. This would indicate that he is a hard worker on the ship and often uses it to wipe his brow when he is sweating.
The main challenge that I found in creating this character was the proportions. Simple because otters generally have an elongated body with short arm and short legs. But, for this particular character, he is a worker and often needs to take tools out of or put tools in his pants so if he had short arm and a long body, he would not be able to reach his pants. Initially, I had his torso very long and his pants areas very short. To change up the design I ended up making his arms longer, pants higher and his neck a little longer. I also gave him a little gut that would allow his pants to be a little higher in the back and lower in the front. In the end, he is able to reach his pockets with his hands with no problem and still holds the characteristics of being an otter.
The final element that I added was a pipe that he smokes that he blows bubbles with. I was thinking maybe this is a way that he fights enemies. He blows the bubbles and either floats on them or throws steam bubbles at enemies.
I ended up drawing 4 pencil versions of the final drawing of Sam before I was happy with one.
When I got to the point of printing out the final color version. One problem that I ran into was that the nose was looking too dark when it was printed and it was difficult to see his nostrils. To fix it, I lightened up the highlighted area on the nose and the darker nostrils were able to show through when it printed.
I'm happy with how it came out and glad that he is finally part of the crew.
I only have two more elements that I need to design for my story.
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