I designed this baseball player to see if I could sell him as a logo or a commission to the Kane County Cougars, an A level minor league baseball team affiliated with the Florida Marlins organization. I created this drawing after having success with a similar character that I designed for the Cook County Cheetahs minor league baseball team. Some people had told me that Lucky Chuckie, the baseball character I designed for the Cheetahs, did not look intimidating enough to be a baseball mascot. I kept that in mind when I designed my rendition of Ozzie the Cougar, and made sure to make him look serious about hitting that baseball!
I didn't have as high of expectations with the Kane County Cougars as I did with the Cook County Cheetahs. This is because they were a larger organization affiliated with a major league team, and even though I felt my design was better, they already had a cartoon version of their mascot. So I had a lot more to compete with from the very start. I thought this picture turned out a lot better than my Lucky Chucky picture did and was very disappointed when I never heard back from the Kane County Cougars baseball team.
The pencil work was done on 80lb. Strathmore meduim-surface drawing paper with a Sanford Non-Photo blue pencil. I then inked it with a size 05 ZiG Millennium pen. It was than cleaned up and darkened in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.04. I then printed it out on standard Georgia-Pacific FAX/Copy paper and colored it with Crayola and Sanford Prismacolor colored pencils. The lettering was done with Paint Shop Pro 7.04.
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