While I do believe that I saw Jessica Rabbit's lounge singer number first back in the early '90s, I did eventually witness most of Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood cartoons just a few years later. Naturally, since I was still a kid at that time, it took me many years before I finally "got" the titillating aspects of both things, and started to appreciate the eroticism.
(Also, I suppose if you needed to add a third girl into the mix, Betty Boop would be the obvious choice)
(Also, I suppose if you needed to add a third girl into the mix, Betty Boop would be the obvious choice)
Red is quite the looker. The quintessential showgirl, she's leggy, has perky tits (but not giant ones like Jessica, since showgirls tend to burn through a lot of calories), wears revealing leotards and has copious amounts of make-up. She is also not an easy character to draw: I would argue that the girl she inspired, Jessica Rabbit, is far easier to nail. Red's face is similar to Gwen Tennyson's from the original Ben 10 series, in that it has shapes that need to be absolutely the right size and positioned in the right places or otherwise, even the slightest misplacement will make it look horribly wrong, and what makes this difficult is that there is very little to aid you in that placement. At least with Hartman designs, you can kind of see or draw lines from the various angles, such as hair spikes, and figure things out that way.
Another thing that gave me a massive headache was Red's body proportions. The first cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), has a slightly different construction and design for Red, which is more cartoonish and stretchy, and her head is quite big in that one. The later cartoons would tone down the zaniness and portray Red in a more realistic manner, such as The Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945), where Red's head is considerably smaller. The third short, Swing Shift Cinderella (1945), released later that same year, is a return to a more petite Red with a slightly larger head. As always, I used my old rule of "just pick the design you enjoy the most and base it on that" and went with the SSC variant, which I see as a hybrid between the original and the Dan McGoo one.
Another thing that gave me a massive headache was Red's body proportions. The first cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), has a slightly different construction and design for Red, which is more cartoonish and stretchy, and her head is quite big in that one. The later cartoons would tone down the zaniness and portray Red in a more realistic manner, such as The Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945), where Red's head is considerably smaller. The third short, Swing Shift Cinderella (1945), released later that same year, is a return to a more petite Red with a slightly larger head. As always, I used my old rule of "just pick the design you enjoy the most and base it on that" and went with the SSC variant, which I see as a hybrid between the original and the Dan McGoo one.
In conclusion, I don't know how well this turned out. But hey, the next time I draw her, it should look better.
Go to deviantART here and here for high-resolution versions of all these images, including transparent ones without a background.
