I’m in the final stages of completing
Connective Tissue. I don’t want to ruin any of the story, so I won’t explain what the dog is eating here, but I wanted this cartoon pooch to be grotesque and somewhat monstrous (yet still somewhat “cute”). I started off drawing a more realistic dog to work out the anatomy, and then moved on to deforming him.
Normal pooch.
Monster pooch (version in book).
Rejected version. I like the face, but the body is bad, especially the forepaws. It looks like Clifford the Big Red Dog after huffing a snootful of speed.
Final version. (Thanks to my friend Mikey P. for sending me pix of his pit bull, Hiro.)