I think it's probably a combination of the red, the roundness of the belly, the beard, and the boots.

Actually blue works well - the sword is coloured blue. So long as the colour is strong enough, it should work.

Well, but he is more "martial" than your avarage Santa- this one would've scared the heck out of me when I was little (I had a hard time as it was... )

He's not *that* scary! Especially given the fact that his sword is made of cardboard!

  - would I've know that as a kid? And Santa with a sword would be hard... And I know how good you are at illusions. Good thing his beard is dark...

Na Thanks so much for the link. I was at Hobby Lobby last night looking at my options. I had seen a few tutorials on alcohol ink on youtube and thought it looked like the best option for acetate.  And I was also considering painting with watercolor markers on vellum and having the artwork laminated with 5 mil plastic. I plan to try out all these options. However, I had another idea that I worked on last night and it worked pretty good. I used bic permanent markers on recycled plastic I got from a blister pack off something I bought at Home Depot.  It's about 10 mil very rigid and durable. Grafix Plastics makes a craft plastic that may be similar. But I can only find that online. I posted an image in my gallery. I was asked to teach a puppetry class at a local art gallery this month.  I decided to do it on shadow puppetry since the current project I'm working on is a shadow puppet show.  I'm no expert. But, I intend to teach them what I've learned so far. I think this bic pen method on recycled plastic materials is going to be a part of the craft session.

The bic pen seems to work pretty well! How does it look light from behind a screen?  Are the colors as vibrant?

Na Thanks so much for the link. I was at Hobby Lobby last night looking at my options. I had seen a few tutorials on alcohol ink on youtube and thought it looked like the best option for acetate.  And I was also considering painting with watercolor markers on vellum and having the artwork laminated with 5 mil plastic. I plan to try out all these options. However, I had another idea that I worked on last night and it worked pretty good. I used bic permanent markers on recycled plastic I got from a blister pack off something I bought at Home Depot.  It's about 10 mil very rigid and durable. Grafix Plastics makes a craft plastic that may be similar. But I can only find that online. I posted an image in my gallery. I was asked to teach a puppetry class at a local art gallery this month.  I decided to do it on shadow puppetry since the current project I'm working on is a shadow puppet show.  I'm no expert. But, I intend to teach them what I've learned so far. I think this bic pen method on recycled plastic materials is going to be a part of the craft session.

I didn't post the link about the alcohol ink, that was In The Dark... However, I've heard of sharpies being used on flattened out plastic milk bottles. Michael Richardson (American) does that.

Your dinosaur looks great! I think your class will work well, it'll be a bit more like drawing/painting which might make it easier to understand/enjoyable for the students.

Shawn the pic in my gallery was shot from the audience side of the screen.  The colors on clear plastic look pretty good I guess. But, I like the way the white cardboard and watercolors in Na's video looked.  I'd like to recreate the vibrant colors like in this video.
Traditional Chinese shadow puppet show

Oh, that Chinese video is in my Youtube favourites! I absolutely love the colours. The problem with traditional Chinese shadow puppets is that you'd be using animal hide and paints... not something I'd have access to nor want to use. Which is why I came up with the watercolours and cardboard thing.

There's some good behind-the-scenes vids of making Chinese/other shadow puppets in my favs:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7D5681F0E3DC884&feature=plcp

I was recently introduced to this music video, which has a really lovely example of using fabric for scenery. It doesn't use colour, but it's a good showcase for how you could use fabric instead for colourful and vibrant backgrounds.
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https://youtu.be/yedD4JsZyT0

Wow, the Chinese really have some tradiotion!