I was suffering through a paticularly boring Chemistry lecture one morning trying my best to stay awake when I started playing with the idea of expanding my Raging Skies universe, which I am developing a comic book for. I had just won a book about cheetahs called Swift and Enduring off of eBay not long before, so cheetahs were even more on my mind than usual. It's not surprising then that a lovely new cheetah girl character is what came to mind! I started sketching her in my notebook immediately and worked on her dilligently until I had the horrible experience of having my mechanical pencil run out of lead half way through the drawing with no way to refill it until class was over!
Eventually I finished my darling new cheetah girl. This cute new character is dressed up in my best guess of what a early 1950's Bundeswehr (West German Army) infantry combat uniform looked like. She is carrying a .30 caliber Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and a .45 cliber Colt M1911A2 semi-automatic pistol. Both of these weapons were used by the United States Army during this period, and since the Americans helped re-arm West Germany to help fight the Cold War there is a good chance they may have used them as well. When it came to naming my new character I didn't have to try hard-- for some reason the name "Sandi" just popped into my head. Her last name, "Gepard," is "Cheetah" in German. Sandi is a "spin-off" character from my Raging Skies comic book that is in the works. That means that she won't be in the current story arc that I am working on, but she may be included in a later saga in the future.
This picture was by no means meant to be perfect. I thought that my rough notebook sketch turned out so well that I scanned it into my computer, cleaned it up and took the notebook lines out, and colored it. Because it is just a sketch it's a little un-even and messy. None the less, Sandi Gepard is just the most adorable little thing and I thought she had to be shared with the world! Please, tell me how you like her!
The pencil work was done on college ruled notebook paper with a .05mm mechanical pencil with 2HB lead. It was than cleaned up, darkened, and softened in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.02. I then printed it out on standard Georgia-Pacific FAX/Copy paper and colored it with Crayola colored pencils. The lettering was done with Paint Shop Pro 7.02.
All text and original multimedia is © 2002 Daniel Keller. All other information is copyrighted by their respective owners.