Zira

The Lion King! Major influence on the both of us, and not just artistically.

One thing that I've been working on for years is to develop a style for drawing big cats that incorporates the best of Disney and real-life felines. The first movie is beautiful, but there have always been things about the characters' designs that bugged me. I'm sure these days Disney would have done it differently, because you can see a great deal of old unnecessary stylized elements leftover from the overly-cartoony lions they used to do, such as Lambert the Sheepish Lion.
For example- yellow fur, gigantic chins, long exaggerated skulls, squishy-looking ears, flat color representing pawpads, and most bizarrely, lines outlining the eye sockets.

Mind you, I love the movies, especially Simba's Pride, it's just that I don't think that they quite managed to cross the line from "cartoonish" to "semi-realistic".

Anyway, I think I've finally managed to reach that goal, and Zira here is the result.

See also: [link]

~Criswell