Out in the jun­gle, all on your own…

I was not always what you would call an out­doorsy per­son. My child­hood was almost entire­ly spend indoors, alter­nat­ing between devour­ing books and immers­ing myself in video games.

It was way past my ado­les­cence that I dis­cov­ered my intense love of nature. This love not only man­i­fest­ed itself in my choice to go veg­an to try and min­i­mize the dam­age I do on Moth­er Nature and our fur­ry friends, but also in a change in my inter­ests and hobbies.

Sure, I still love books and games, but you can also often find me under a blue sky. Be it geo­caching, run­ning, bicy­cling, or hik­ing, if it can be done out­side, I love it! And if there is a way to spend a vaca­tion with a tent on my back and some stur­dy boots on my feet, then count me right the frick in!

So, of course, I was more than excit­ed when the guys from the online card game Cata­mancer asked me to illus­trate their card Sur­vival Kit­ten.

Kit­ten overload

Sur­vival Kit­ten marks the fourth illus­tra­tion I did for Cata­mancer. If you want to check the first three illus­tra­tions, here is Cat­splo­sion, Card­board Box and Cook­ie Cut­ter Cut.

Work­ing with Frost­bolt Games, the pub­lish­er of Cata­mancer, is an absolute blast, and this time was no different.

When I post­ed my ini­tial idea about my lit­tle ram­bo cat, cute but also fero­cious, they were game imme­di­ate­ly. And I have to say, folks, I didn’t have so much fun draw­ing some­thing in a long time!

It all start­ed with a base sketch that I did on my iPad in Pro­cre­ate. I’ve got­ten into the habit of tak­ing my iPad to work with me and mer­ri­ly scrib­bling away on it dur­ing my lunch­break. I know, I know, it’s not the most healthy habit and I should take a break once in a while, but LOOK AT THOSE EYES! IRRESTISTABLE! How could you leave that alone?

A ques­tion of color

So, which col­or should the cat be? Now, per­son­al­ly, I’m a big fan of black cats (and not just because my partner’s cat is black, which — by the way — was the rea­son for the cat in the ​“Card­board Box” illus­tra­tion being black), but I want­ed to go with some­thing more col­or­ful for this illustration.

Since I already knew the cam­ou­flage shirt would be pre­dom­i­nant­ly green, I thought the orange coat would fit that just fine and would also go along nice­ly with the blue background.

The cat’s eyes have been orange, too…until the home stretch of the art­work, when my part­ner sug­gest­ed that I should try icy blue instead. The rea­son being — you guessed it — anoth­er cat that we know. :)

Any­way, draw­ing the kit­ten was a lot of fun, I am real­ly pleased with the results and I hope I can work for the Cata­mancer game again in the future and draw some more fur­ry critters.

In the mean­time, please make sure to find the cat near­est to you and give it a lit­tle pet!

Cheers,