Dated 31/12/2011

Kaa might be well known throughout the jungle for his hypnotic techniques, but he soon discovers that a few hours in the company of Baloo's hot, tired feet can have an equally mesmerising effect.

[Alternative 'clean' version available - click here]

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For whatever reason, it's become a curious tradition of mine to try and submit a piece of art on New Years Eve - something which, with the exception of 2008, I have done every year since 2007. And I'm not about to stop now.



Following on from last week's Timon comic, I've been going through a bit of a Disney phase recently, trying my hand at replicating the style and drawing some of my favourite characters. With any luck there will be a few more examples to come, but for this year's final submission, I decided to go down The Jungle Book route.

Strictly speaking, I have depicted Baloo once before, though I didn't really make a good fist of it - some might remember my rather crude animation loop of Baloo stomping a mouse in December 2007, but given that only his foot was visible, you could be forgiven for not recognising the subject! Four years on therefore, I have made my first genuine attempt to draw the character. However, rather than throwing another generic animal in with him, I wanted to keep the picture within the world of the Jungle Book by choosing Kaa as his victim instead.

As with the Timon comic, I wanted to stay as faithful as possible to the original Disney styling. Thankfully Kaa is absurdly easy to draw, and Baloo wasn't too tricky either - though sadly I don't think I quite got the foreshortening effect right, hence his head looks rather small in proportion with the rest of his body! Still, the biggest challenge was the background; I had been fairly loose with the background on the Timon comic, but this time I was striving to create something that looked much more like a proper Disney animation cel, so I studied a few Jungle Book layouts before attempting to compile my own interpretation. Given how concerned I was that it wouldn't look right, I'm actually very happy with the results.

Anyway, that's it from me for 2011; a year which I'll be quite happy to see the back of given that I spent most of it unemployed - and that Ipswich Town were diabolically crap again throughout! Whilst I have severe doubts that you'll be seeing much artwork from me in 2012, I would like to thank everybody for your comments, favourites, shouts etc. over the past year and I wish you all the very best for the next 12 months.

Happy New Year, Everyone!



RRRex