Cheshire's smile animations

After making my Llama animation insert, I decided to have a little go at something else as I felt it didn't turn out as good as I had imagined. I was watching Tin Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland' and was inspired to make an animation centered around the Cheshire Cat.
It seems almost obvious, trying to capture the magic and mystery of his character with animation. The way he appears and moves around will be fun to play with.
Also when viewed in the Zoetrope, I imagine it will look rather magical. The slight flickering that happens with the device will add a really nice antique effect and echo the time of the Zoetropes creation, when moving images really were magical.

These are some initial ideas, playing around with the cats face and having it disappear and reappear. The first one has his eyes stay there as the face fades and the bottom has his whole face fade.

This is a kind of standard for images of the cheshire cat, the fading face seems to be very recognizable. Looking at the actual way ive drawn the cat, I don't like it. I've taken too much influence from the Tim Burton style [gothic and bit evil] and I really want to create my own version of him and make it really unique.
There is also too much dark colours and detail that would blur in the Zoetrope. 

This one shows the face fading slowly so that eventually it all disappears around his eyes. This is quite nice and works well as just lines.
I don't think it would be as successful with colour, which dosen't really effect much.

I did this one, trying to get a full body of the cat and do the same fading trick. [All i do is to rub out the cat and save every now and then as I go along. This would be easy to do traditional as I would trace over the previous image but draw less of it.]
I like this one alot and I prefer the cuter and plumper way I drew the cat.

I printed off this version and the one above to go in my little Zoetrope and although they were quite small and subsequently a little blurred, the animation worked well, if not a little fast.
I think that making the whole body disappear is a bit much to do in just 15 frames when put into a Zoetrope becuase the animation is way too fast.
Lest rethink what the Chesire Cat will be doing...