Redrawing old characters- Mr. Hetherington

Here's another old character I've dug up from the pages of my childhood sketchbooks. When I was in elementary school, there was one teacher I saw on occasion who had a British accent, and to my younger self, that stood out to me. His name was Mr. Hetherington, and for whatever reason, I made a guinea pig named after him. In my old comics, Mr. Hetherington the guinea pig was a next-door neighbor to my main characters, Cinnamon and Midnight (there was no Domino in my earliest comics). He was a gentleman and grew an exotic garden with very tall trees, like a mini forest. I don't remember if this gardening fixation was something I made up for the character, or if the real life Mr. Hetherington had mentioned being a gardener and inspired me to give that attribute to the character. Cinnamon and Midnight's eccentric uncle named Uncle Weird (yes, that really was his name) would frequently try to cut down Mr. Hetherington's prized trees just to be mean, but would always fail. I don't remember if I ever showed the real life Mr. Hetherington my comics, so I wouldn't know how he'd react to being made into a character. For this modern redesign, I made his eyes slightly smaller and added small wrinkles to suggest he's a little older than my other guinea pigs. I kept the glasses, but changed his shirt from red to green to symbolize him working with plants, and added a straw gardener hat. And instead of Uncle Weird pestering him, I thought I'd have Rockie the raccoon stealing his fruits and vegetables. Hmmm, speaking of Uncle Weird, maybe I should make him the next character that gets a modernized re-design? Giving him a new name would probably help too.

The colored pen drawing of Mr. Hetherington is from a comic I probably drew in 1999. My kid self didn't bother to date my drawings, and the only way I can guess when an old comic was drawn is if the comic makes pop culture references (I estimate 1999 because the next page had a comic where Cinnamon the guinea pig goes on a gameshow that parodies Who Wants To Be A Millionaire). The pencil drawing was done later in middle school in September 2002, when I had grown older and started dating my drawings. Why did I draw him wearing a fez in that comic? I'm not sure. Maybe to make him look more sophisticated? It's interesting to look back on my old comics and see what strange ideas I had.