Furious Bull

Hi guys! 

I have seen the amazing designs that everybody posted here and I spent quite some time thinking what animal to choose. I was going for a more massive / powerful one and I ended up choosing a bull. 

Then the process of finding a good referance began..

After finding this last image, I started sketching a bit on paper and after multiple itterations and attempts, this is what I could come up with, based on the last image, combined with the second where the bull is trowing that man.

For the next step, I moved into Illustrator and started tracing the outline.

I noticed that while I was making the stroke thicker, the shape was getting a more powerful feel, and I decided to create a final mark based on the feel that the thick stroke was giving. So I kept it. After playing with different color combinations, I searched for places where I could involve some shadow / reflection effect. I did that under the feet and on the back of the bull.

I decided to use tone of red to emphasize certain areas of the animals body and I then applied the red coloring.

This is what the finalised design looks like : 

I would love to hear your thoughts about it! Do you think that the border idea was a bad one? What suggestions do you have to improve the design?

Radu