Initial concepts as well as final, inked sketch at bottom center

Scanning in at 600 dpi (highest my machine will go) and in black and white

Taking out the eraser marks and other garbage that shows up in the raw scan

Cleaned-up scan with background removed

Creating background color/texture. This process is always the same for me, but I’ll detail it here.

 

For the texture itself, I use a texture brush which I downloaded online for free. (Can’t remember where—sorry—but Google it and a bunch will show up!) I use the Multiply blending mode in the same color as the background fill to create dimension without adding too much chaos in terms of color pallete.

 

For the shadow, I use a large round brush with 0% hardness so there are no hard edges. I brush just around the border of the frame, set layer blending mode to Multiply, and reduce opacity (generally to about 50%).

 

For the highlight in the center, I use the same round brush with 0% hardness, but bump up the size about 100 pixels or so. I generally try to keep it 1/3 of my total canvas size. (So a 1500 pixel canvas would mean a 500 pixel highlight in the center.) Then I set the layer blending mode to Screen and reduce opacity to around 50%.

Filled in the letters with plain black. Usually I have to go around the edges with a very small brush and paint in the gaps between the fill and the outline.

Separated each element on the drawing onto its own layer. I use the outline of the body just so I can grab the inner shapes (with the Magic Wand selection tool). Then I hide visibility on my original outline.

Completed still image! Now to make the cat disappear, as Cheshire Cats tend to do …

I put all the cat’s body parts EXCEPT for the smile into a folder. I then duplicated that folder 10 times and named each for the percentage opacity they would be. So 100 was 100% opaque, 50 was 50% opaque, etc., all the way down to 10.

I used the Animation palette to create the animated GIF. With each frame, I turned on the next layer of opacity. That way the cat would gradually fade away.

Completed GIF