Attention Top Vector Character Artists! Put high-quality black vector line & flat color on tight sketch children's book cartoon illustration

Busy illustration studio needs to add more reliable vector artists to our freelance team! This sample image is a test to identify vector illustrators who can do great cartoon characters and are interested in upping their game to doing professional work. Must be easy to work with and deliver excellent work, quickly and reliably. More assignments for artists who do a great job. Fantastic opportunity for vector illustrators who can take direction well, and want the professional experience to take their skills up several levels. The Task: See provided cartoon sketch. For the purposes of this test, the task is to finish the art with black line and flat color. For the black line, please use .5 point line weight; this is thinner than would be used for production, but is good for identifying good vector line skills. Please provide a layered .ai source file. Our studio takes the file and makes our own edits in-house to the line weights and color after the work is submitted by the artist, so full editability of the file is required. Keep a separate layer for characters and background black line, and separate layers for characters color, the background burst, and the background colors. Normally these images require shading and highlights layers as well, but the job has been simplified here to focus on just line and color.
 Please choose bright, fun colors appropriate for a children's book or kids' coloring book. Some technical points and common issues to address beforehand: - Please use the Pen Tool to draw lines. Using a tablet and Pencil tool is quicker, but results in wobbly, inaccurate lines and we can't accept work that looks like that. It's worth it to take the little bit of extra time to make a much more accurate, clean and smooth line. When drawing circular objects it is often helpful to draw a circle with the Ellipse tool, then edit that to fit the desired shape (see "Pen tool and circular [login to view URL]" and "need clean [login to view URL]"). - Do not use the Paint Bucket tool to add color. Color needs to be newly-drawn shapes (using pen tool, or the Blob tool is quick and good for this as long as it’s done neatly and the color stays within the black lines) on a Color layer beneath the black line layer, so the color is “trapped” in the black line. If you use the Paint Bucket tool, the line is not easily editable or separated from the color, and changing the line leaves a white space in the color (see “white [login to view URL]”). We cannot accept a file like this. Thank you, we look forward to seeing your work!