Creating a new character and sequence, and the Tomie dePaola contest

Yesterday was the deadline for the 2014 Tomie dePaola contest. I learned a lot from participating in the last Tomie contest, and I decided to submit to this one as well.

The assignment was "to create a six-panel sequence that has a beginning, middle and an end that is obvious, featuring a character of your own invention. It can be funny, sad, dramatic or ordinary, but interesting and with lots of invention and finesse, and depicting emotion in 4 to 6 frames."

While I could have done more with the background, and with adding more details, I had many new ideas by working on this. My five year old son felt very strongly that the bird would not fly away forever, and we made up several stories of what they might do together next.