In helping me finalise my Alligator I did some realist drawings just to break away from the completely animated and fictional and take on a different perspective to widen my knowledge of the proportions of an alligator and the toning. 

Doing this I have been able to take away key features of an alligator that I will have to remember when it comes to creating my illustrator, and that is the teeth, curved tale and some sort of shading. After doing these realist drawings I then started drawing a more fictional version, giving my alligator a bit of character:

I have added elements of previous illustration examples to help me creating something that works well, I will put this into illustrator and will play around with different features and colour.