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Of course , there had been many Disney ( and other cartoon ) - Bears already. I wanted to stay away from them as far as possible...
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So I started my sketches based on this little toy, which I had picked up in a monastry outside moscow and which I always had loved for it's nice proportions. Now, I finally knew, why I had bought it...
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And of course BART THE BEAR was a great inspiration, I watched and studied a lot of his movies and I was lucky to even find a documentary from National Geographic on him, what a great guy, rest in peace, Bart....
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Look at the size of this guy, the head and the paw on the shoulder,the sheer "presence" of this wonderful creature, you easily forget this if your used to - and think in terms of- cartoon bears.I also visited the two kodiaks in the Hamburg zoo, and time and time again, my first thought was ;"M>y god, they are huge!" I wanted to capture this feeling by all means. But how do you draw "size" and "weight", without having a chance to give a relation on the same sheet , use an upshot camera-angle or just a part of the body ??? If you gotta show the whole body, even a whale looks like a herring.
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I found the lower lip very helpful for this purpose, it always hangs down, makes a great tool for a follow thru , always looks kinda numb and there's spit and saliver dropping from it. It gives a great feel of size and weight to the drawing.
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These above sketches were done with exactly this purpose. And after the bears went through the giftet hands of Rune Bennicke and all the other guys at Disney's , they looked really good...
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.....more to come