This was probably the first piece of concept art I created for A Grand Day for Fishing. The cast was originally going to be a lot shorter, featuring Clay Man, Kong, the Captain and the Shark. Originally the film was titled Shark! and would have mainly focused on the shark attack. This early version of the Captain was supposed to be appear like an older version of one of the soldiers from Clash of the Clay, however as I started developing more ideas for the film, I felt as though the Captain would need a more cartoony design to fit in with the rest of the characters. Remembering the two frogs from Klay Kong, I now knew what I wanted his base design to be.

Here's the updated version of the Captain with his original crewmate, Private Pike a large fish-like character. Originally the Captain's crew consisted of Pvt. Pike and the blue frog, and Pike even made it into the storyboards. However I wanted a little more consistency with the crew, so I decided to make them all frogs by scrapping Pike, replacing him with Sebastian (the red frog) and giving naming the blue frog Pvt. Pike instead. Confusing, I know! Anywho this version of the Captain is very close to the one that appeared in the film, and also the design I used in the storyboards, however I soon figured that the cap placed on his eyes would have been a little tricky to both sculpt and animate, so I scrapped it for his blind eye instead.

One of my favourite pages, this features some rough designs for the various fish and the first design for Sebastian the red frog. Not only did the first Sebastian design have big goofy teeth like the Heavy from Clash of the Clay, but he was even missing his feet! I had the idea of making him a cripple to go along with the Captain's missing hand and blind eye, and that he'd drag himself across the floor, but I felt as though giving him feet worked better with the action scenes. Might use this idea for a future character though. Of course in the top left corner we have a nice little doodle of the three of them together.