A little history on Spike the Tiger, how he came to be.
When I was little, growing up I was teased and bullied a lot. I didn’t have any one really to be on my side. No sisters, no brothers, no grandparents, no relatives. My mother was often sick and my dad was working. Friends/ neighbors only help so much and can’t be with you 24 hours a day. I only had one or two friends if I was lucky enough. I had the occasional guidance counselor at school est but in the end they move on to greener grasses and you never hear from them again. Being separated in to special classes which in my normal class time only creates a feeling of segregation to make matters worse. So often as I did, I daydreamed in class or any where boring or being in a scary situation. I would imagine something powerful and only friendly to me to be on my side. Then I would doodle the ideas of imaginary friends in on some paper or in some school book. I would draw the powerful black stallion from the movie The Black Stallion. I would draw him running and have smoke billowing out of his nostrils. I would draw big eagles, tigers, lions and powerful lizards and est. I would doodle my favorite characters from my favorite cartoons of the day and I began to make new characters and stories based on those cartoons and have my own persona character in those stories. Eventually there was a cartoon called Voltron that I really enjoyed watching as a kid. I just loved how these characters were in charge of these huge and powerful robo lions and fought the forces of evil. I then as always created a story with characters of my own only with giant robo tigers. But over time favorite cartoons fade to black as so many times before, things change and so did my little imagined cartoon and characters. Many robo tigers and their operators dwindled to one beloved imaginary powerful tiger friend who was no longer robotic but something more with a heart and personality something that was just as good as those other things imagined to be on my side but can do so many more things and adventures.
In time I added a few more things like a world where he came from, a few more friends and enemies to fight est.
Also over time I kept him as a mascot, as a learning tool and a wonderful story/cartoon idea.The rest is history and spoilers to be revealed someday when the time is right.
These set of drawings is for the front page of my web site. I'm just going to have to decide which pose is the best. Spike doesen't normally act this way. He normally does the typical poncing, fighting and protecting but he as made an exception to pose for my drawings so I can fix up and refurbish my web site.
I would like to have Spike's tail to over lap some of the title. You can help me choose if you like. I have left the rough drawings as is so you can see how my ideas were coming along. As you can see, I had a few drawings that I did not continue since i did not like the direction they were going in. Others were experiments. Also because I have a bad habit of making the drawing run off the page I had to draw extra arm/paw drawings to be added later.
I used a blue erasable pencil that animators and drafters use for the loose sketching part and then used a regular writing pencil on top of that for the details.
Here below are the rest of the sleeping Spike drawings and a scratching Spike to be used for my new Scratching post banner.
Below I will use these potential drawings for my Creative blog banner here. Just have to make up my mind to which is best. BTW he's just gotten in to the paint and is painting paw prints all over your screen. Again not typical for Spike.
Another position for the paw printing Spike. With both of these positions I used some picture reference of small house cats so I can get the look right since I wasn't sure. Spike was a bit stubborn. ;)
I tried a different pose and theme in this one with Spike fighting with an airbrush gone crazy.
The treasure box drawing is for potential over hauled idea for my treasure part of my site.
The last drawing is another version of that treasure themed idea.
And that's all folks. ;)
Time for bed.
