The Making of Scary Cat
Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)
Read More:
Scary Cat (3 book series) Kindle Edition (amazon.com)
Scary Cat is my third active project. I first conceived it a few years ago. I had cats at various moments of my life. I figured that a story about a cute cat was a fun idea.
This is the only series where I draw everything by hand. I do not apply the colors with computers. The dialogues I do add in photoshoot. It is a lot easier to write text on the computer.
Each volume starts with the character design. I want my protagonists to wear different outfits in every volume. I think this mimics life to a point. In real life, we rarely wear the same outfits twice.
I only break this pattern in the school volume. I designed cute uniforms for Filipa, and her friends. I like the concept of school uniforms. I think visually they look quite dashing.
In the first book, I introduce Filipa and her family. In the second book, I develop more the father-daughter dynamics. The father is an orange tabby that leans more towards golden.
Frankly, orange tabbies look more yellow to me, than orange. The protagonist is based on a tuxedo cat. Her main color scheme is black and white, with expressive green eyes.
All her siblings have a heart shaped mark somewhere in their bodies. They inherited that heart spot from the mother. I thought it was just a nice artistic choice.
Sometimes kids inherit birthmarks from one’s parents. I wanted all the kitties to have heart shaped birthmarks. The first book I didn’t use a specific color theme. The second book I based it loosely on my first day of school.
I was really scared the first day I went to school, and it never got better. The third book I made it about clown phobia. I am not personally afraid of clowns, but I wanted something scary for the birthday episode.
The color scheme for this book was red, gold and black. I thought that visually it would look interesting. The clown itself was basically a turtle with makeup. I like turtles. Turtles are fun.
As of now, I am mentally brainstorming the fourth book. All the character designs are finished. All that is left is to set the plot into motion. All my books are drawn with a combination of pens, markers and coloring pencils.
The backgrounds are usually done with coloring pencils, while the characters are drawn mostly with markers. I chose markers in order to make them stand out against the background.
Plus, pencils last longer. I have used up a lot of black markers in all my Scary Cat books. I mainly stick to Alcohol based markers. They do not cause the ink to runoff.
If you are looking for something fun to read to your little kids, I hope you give my Scary Cat book a fair chance. This is Teresita Blanco, the Artsy Sister. Bye.
