This story is told from my own personal perspective and I admit not having all the information related, but this is what I was given to work with.
My good friend Boo was drawing models of new characters for Studio Cougar, and from what I gather these images below where the model-references given to him to build a character from.
You can see the two photos of actual product, to which character wanted to be based off, and Boo's sketches, that were approved. In the bottom-right corner is even an earlier head-version that got rejected.
Looking good so far dontcha think?
Boo drew the first version and it was sent to me to colour. I did not know at the time that also another colourist had been assigned to colour it too. I'm not even
quite sure if the other colour-version had been done long before I even started working on my version.
First version seen below is what I coloured accordingly to the model-photo I had been given and Boo was happy, as well as Studio Cougar too, initially.
Then the word came, that they wanted Boo to re-draw the front-part of Kikstart's armour and also the pelvis-area to better match the actual product, as the owner of the bike didn't like it enough.
So Boo re-drew the parts needed and added them to the drawing and I could easily make necessary changes to colours building on top of my earlier layers.
I was at this time shown Kikstart by another colourist Liam Shalloo and I was asked to make the hand-parts similar to his colour-choises, so I did.
I also was asked to add some graphics to Kikstart's helmet, based on couple photos I was provided, so I did that, eventhough I begged and pleaded Boo to draw them there, as I was only the colourist and wasn't sure my drawing on top of Boo's lines would do justice enough.
After all the needed changes Boo and I did, we were very pleased with ourselves that the character came around looking like the actual product in photos and we sent the final image to Studio Cougar where they liked our work.
However a month later I saw an Q&A of Simon Furman at Allspark-website, where they showed some of the villains that Cougar would be battling. They also showed Kikstart and it was the earlier version, with Liam's colours.
I was rather suprised by it, and when I asked why his version became the official one, I was told that in his image, were the sponsors logo "QUANTUM" on chest and feet. I had seen them in the small web-thumnail of Liam's coloured version that I received while still working on the adjustments to Kikstart and never could read them properly. I was also never asked to add the logo to Kikstart, which was also suprising, if that indeed was the biggest difference to make it official.
Heck I could have added the logo anytime they needed.
But they never asked.
Hope you enjoyed this little tale of high adventure.
