Hornbill Willie ~ Color Sketch

I'm thinking of a character along the lines of something like this.

Davelyman out!

Hornbill Willie

My story calls for a bird to go after the Chameleon. Looking up the natural enemies of Chameleons, I discover that one of its more exotic and beautiful hunters is the Hornbill. So I decide to go with that and start drawing Hornbills.

But as I'm drawing these birds I keep thinking I've seen this bird somewhere before. Then it hits me...

It turns out that Zazu from the Lion King is a Yellow Billed Hornbill! (And he's designed a lot better than mine too >:-(  I like how they designed the tail. I might have to "borrow" that!).

So you know what that means. I have to design a Hornbill that doesn't look anything like Zazu. Taking the drawings I did of the real birds (top), I'm looking for shapes I can exploit.

Boomerang shapes are always cool. The design on the bottom right (above) looks good. Lets see if I can come up with a body shape for it:

It looks like I'm getting somewhere with this. Playing with shapes and proportions here. I'm favoring the upright position of this bird as opposed to the "squat" position of Zazu. That will help distinguish my bird from Zazu. I'm going to go play with this some more. Davelyman out!

LC Character Rotation ~ Preliminary Rough

Alright, a full character turnaround. A logical next step after the head rotation.

 He's a... funny looking character, I must say. He doesn't look like what everybody else is doing. Maybe thats a good thing? Maybe not, one guy thought he was a frog :-(. But there is a reason for this design, I'm trying to stay somewhat faithful to his original 1985 design I did in my young 20s. But I do want to push the appeal of that design. He has come a long way. But he still has a way to go. I feel I have pushed his design as far as I can but he still needs more. I'm going to have to show this around and see if I can get some quality input and really nail his design. Your comments are welcome too.

Davelyman out.