Warm, Wise Monkey Character

Rational Approach

We offer a program through schools targeted at children 8 to 13 years of age to help them develop emotional intelligence.

We need a character that is a monkey to engage with children and teach them emotional intelligence skills. The monkey will be in print on the instructional materials. Ultimately we need three views of the final character but initially, we want to focus on the head, especially the face, and then refine it and have the body included in the final three views: front view, 3/4 front view, and side view. The target is a male monkey or related primate.
He is wise, approximately 50 years old, in human equivalent years. He is like a philosopher-monk who is interested in virtue and long term values that last instead of superficial things like fame and fortune. But he has a excellent sense of humor, enjoying the absurd, and seeing the comedy in the frailty that makes us humans.
He needs to come across as cute, and loving like a good relative (older uncle maybe?) but still be wise and able to kindly impart his wisdom to the students in a way that is less confrontational than a parent or teacher.
Since it is to appeal to children, it needs to have a bit of a cartoon warmth to it even as it is somewhat realistic. To do this it needs to match up with other existing characters that are drawn in a "Toon Shaded" (cel shaded) style. So it will have a outline around it so that it can’t have a fuzzy outline like some of the monkeys shown in the examples below. One of the challenges is to give it a warm, cute look while not having the normal fuzziness of capuchin monkeys (especially around their faces and necks). It can have short hair that is "painted" on but it can't have a long fur which would look odd if a dark outline was drawn around it.

You don't have to be anchored to completely realistic monkeys....indeed it may make it more "cute" and warm if it has some human-type features, while still clearly being a monkey. For example it might not have a such a pronounced monkey "snout" and instead be a flatter face which is more similar to human faces that don't have the mouth protruding so much from the overall face shape.

We've tried to give some overall ideas but are open to different ways to achieve that warm, wise monkey feel if done in some other way than we given.