Swiper the Fox. Designed by Helena Giersz.

Swiper was one of those original characters for Dora the Explorer that I designed on a piece of paper with watercolors.

…yes the very old style. Everybody liked Swiper right away! 
He was described to me by Chris Gifford as a fox that steals things for fun. It was supposed to be  a little bit mischievous but also it was very important to show a villain in a friendly way because the show was geared towards preschoolers. Before the actual production of the show I got a message from Nick Jr research department that after checking out with preschoolers focus groups it turned out that Swiper appeared to be too scary. They said they still like the character, but it has to be without the mask and without the gloves!!!… and I was like well if we take away the mask and the gloves, then it will be just a regular fox:) In the end I’m happy that my Swiper stayed the way it was originally designed. After 10 years of that watercolor drawing I had to design another Swiper more realistic for a potential live action movie, but the movie did not happen at that time. The next Swiper Design was done by me with my Polish friends from Fumi studio in Poland – It was a 3-D Swiper for the reboot of Dora the Explorer. We had to work virtually because of pandemic.