Dr. Seuss' THE CAT IN THE HAT - Salt & Pepper Shaker Conceptual Design In The Late 90's

Here is the final concept art, in color, for a Cat In The Hat salt and pepper shaker I got the chance to work on at The Mint in the late '98 or so. This final drawing based on the pose that was liked the most and I was lucky that they allowed me to ink the drawing to match a Seuss drawing style that was in the book. I also kept the colors to a minimum and used the palette that the original Cat In The Hat books used. The Cat himself is the pepper shaker and when you take him off the ball he's sitting on, the ball and objects around it are the salt shaker. I still like how it turned out and it had good anchors on it to make it a nice item...or so I hoped. It was inked on bristol board with a brush and then colored with magic markers.

Below are some pencil designs that were done working out the ideas of what could be, but were not chosen. They were drawn on vellum with a mechanical pencil to get the finer details worked out. I'm posting these since they came out looking really nice!


I like some of these fun designs, BUT....in the end, it didn't make it past the prototype sculpt phase. Why you ask? Because it was really flimsy and delicate even though the prototype was solid. It just looked too dainty, and in the end, it would have been a much better idea to just produce it as a statue. I remember holding the prototype in my hand and shaking it gently to get an idea of how it would work and I was scared to touch it! The Cat's thin body and arms just looked too breakable. They should have made the limbs thicker but then it would have been off model. I couldn't imagine how they were ever going to package and ship these out without any massive breakage. And in the end, the 'Powers That Be' came to the same decision...