I Classified Pop Culture Characters By Species And Here Are What 11 Teams Look Like

I work in advertising and my job is to find ideas, and when the day is over, I keep looking for them for myself! That's what I like best, thinking about an idea, finding a concept! Finally, I rarely draw just to draw, but for the pleasure of giving life to my idea. And for this series, in particular, it takes a lot of time and a lot of organization.

I proceed in 3 steps, starting by choosing an animal and listing all the associated characters that come to my mind. It's a good memory exercise to try to remember everything you've read, or seen, or played and to remember the characters and their names! Once I've made the first list, I usually add to it by calling on my community. On Insta, I ask my followers which character of a certain species they would absolutely love to see! And even if most of the time their answers are already on my list, sometimes I get a good surprise... And it helps me not to forget the most important ones! Of course, I will always forget some of them, I don't know everything and it is human, but when I forget a character I know and I like a lot, it’s really frustrating!

Once this first step is finished and I have my complete list of characters, I start the longest but also my favorite part: the setting up. I start by sorting these characters by size between very small, medium-small, medium-large, and large, which allows me to see how to arrange them together.

If I have more than 40 characters, or if they are all a bit big (like the pigs, for example), I already know that they won't fit in one square, so I make a double team. Once this initial sorting is done, the serious stuff begins!

I try to make small groups of 3 or 4 that can interact together. Some of them seem obvious to me, like putting Simba next to Kimba or Ted with all the teddy bears.

For others, I improvise! Like when Deadpool the Duck shoots the Duck Hunt duck, or when Roger Rabbit gathers all the rabbits around a picture of his wife. It's important to convey the character of each of these characters through their pose, what they're doing, or who they're interacting with.

Then, to see if all this fits into a square and can work, I use a first draft on which I roughly place circles more or less large, representing the characters, with their number on my list. This step is essential to make sure I don't forget anyone, and to see how everything fits together.

Now that the main part is done, I can finally start drawing!

The boards contain between 40 and 60 characters, which takes me about 10 hours to draw between the draft, the line art, and the coloring with alcohol markers.

I've done 11 so far, but it's not over yet! There are still several to come (tigers, mice, dogs, cats, foxes, fishes...) and I'm saving the best for last (the dragons)!

If you have missed my previous drawings, check out my other fanart featuring famous characters on Bored Panda: here I gave each Pokemon a trainer that fits the best; I also imagined what pop culture characters would buy at the supermarket here and here; I illustrated famous characters who both want the same thing, characters' first day at the beach, their time in quarantine; I also showed what would happen if cartoon characters fused together here and here.