Strękowska-Zaremba noted:
Uszatek from the series changed his clothes several times during the episode. The disguises were introduced by Zbigniew Rychlicki out of boredom, which, however, harmonised with the character of [...] the Teddy Bear. Uszatek had outfits for all weathers, plus a few bathrobes and a dozen or so pyjamas.
The second distinctive literary character that Rychlicki gave a visual shape to is Plastuś from Maria Kownacka’s books. In this case, he was not the only artist to illustrate his adventures, although Rychlicki was the first to give them a visual setting. Other classic titles illustrated by Rychlicki included Ludwik Jerzy Kern’s Proszę Słonia [Please, Mr Elephant], Wanda Chotomska’s Od Rzeczy do Rzeczy [From One Thing to Another], Polish editions of classic adventure books such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Juliusz Verne’s The Mysterious Island and Lyman Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Throughout his career he has illustrated a total of more than 150 titles.
A prominent place among them is occupied by collections of fairy tales and folk tales, which are among the artist’s favourite themes. In his illustrations to them, he often drew on motifs from folk art – the style of Łowicz cut-outs or Podhale woodcuts. According to his wife Halina Rychlicka, the formation of Rychlicki’s artistic sensitivity and his passion for folk art was influenced by his childhood spent in the countryside, the active participation of the artist’s family in rural cultural life and the folk tales he listened to at the time.
By reaching for folk elements, Rychlicki was part of a wider phenomenon of post-war inspiration from local folklore traditions in children’s illustration. In his home country, this was done alongside Adam Kilian or Eugenia Różańska, and in other Central European countries by Albina Makunajte, Viera Bombová or Josef Lada, among others. Folk art, however, is not Rychlicki’s only source of inspiration. In the colour scheme, the drawing of the figures and the highly decorative surface form of the illustrations to the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, one can see delicate references to Iryan miniature art, in the swirling, rippling lines and bright colours of the illustrations to collections of folk tales, folklore elements can be seamlessly combined with motifs taken from pop art and psychedelic graphics of the late 1960s and early 1970s.