Meet Gus, sort of.

The funny thing about being a creative person is that there are usually several ideas swimming around in your head at once.

Gus came to me during a road trip to Florida for a cave diving trip. I liked the name first. Gus the Great White Shark. From there, a character started to take shape.He’s a juvenile great white exploring the world and, in the process, learning more about himself. The story is being developed for kids roughly ages 3 to 8, but for now I’m keeping most of the actual plot under wraps.

What I can share is how much I’m enjoying learning the visual side of telling a children’s story. Illustrating a book is very different from creating a single painting. You’re thinking about character consistency, expressions, movement, page turns, visual rhythm, and how a sequence of small panels can move a story forward.

I’ve also been drawing digitally for this one, which has meant learning to draw on a tablet as part of the process. At the same time, I’m still mixing in some hand-painted background scenes and then touching them up digitally, so the project is becoming a bit of a hybrid between traditional and digital illustration.

One thing I’ve been thinking about with Gus is something that comes up a lot in character design: would you recognize him just from his silhouette?

The most memorable characters usually have something distinctive about their overall shape, posture, or proportions before you even get to facial expressions or details. So part of developing Gus has been figuring out what makes him feel like Gus, rather than just another cartoon shark.

There’s still a lot to work out, which is part of what makes it fun.

For now, I’ll share a few glimpses of the character development as he starts to find his shape.