Plaid Creature

“Doc, what the f*ck is that?”

Greetings from the rear everybody!  Moved back from the front for a little rest and relaxation.

I’ve finally got some other commissions that were overdue turned into a few people, and now I’m down to only a few left.  I’m pretty proud of myself.  These moments don’t come often to me, so please….allow me to relish in the moment of achievement.

Out of the commissions that I have left, one of my friends paid me to provide him with a mock comic book cover for one of the greatest cartoons on televison at the moment:  The Venture Bros.

I needed inspiration to start working on this project so I attained the 3rd season on DVD, and it was amazing.  Sadly, I ended up watching it more than working on the comission, but my friend, Mackie warned me that it was going to happen.  I watched the season in like two days at work.  Oh well, I’ve since been pumped to finish this up.  However since I’ve started it, I realized that I was going to need a post for this week and Mackie has decided to be completely “unamurrican” (He’s totally Canadian, seriously.) and not let me post anything more than these two images on what we agreed to create.  I think it’s gonna work out pretty well though.  I think I’m going to shoot for a more of a stylized painted approach rather than stick to the usual cel-shade this time around.  I need to completely refresh my skills.  Amazingly, I actually started off digitally painting;  however not along the same skill levels that Dr. Conspicuous and his amazing realism, but it was the way to work for me at the time….but now that I’ve been hooked on the animator’s cel-shading, my painting part of my brain has completely atrophied.  I plan to rectify that with this piece.  Gotta get that muscle back to its full “stre-unth.”

So here is the thumbnail and the first rough that I ended up working on earlier this week:

The final rough that me and Mackie agreed upon.

From the poses here, it’s sort of an upward shot of both Brock Samson and Dr. Thaddeus Venture.  It’s probably pretty sketchy to tell but you can sort of see Brock keeping the Venture back from something that’s glowing in the foreground in front of them.  Normally when I usually sketch out my work, I’ll always draw up another rough image with detail in pencil.  This time around….I did it completely rockstar and didn’t use sketches to get some of the work started on Brock.  It’s all still crazy rough, and it took me way too long to do it though, longer than I would if I just went over the lines again in Illustrator.  I probably won’t do it for Dr. Venture.  Peep Brock below:

The art style of the show is rather special to me.  So as I was drawing up Brock’s face and body, I realized how my “cartoony” art style is very similar to the show, potentially making this project a breeze thus far.  Obviously they use a bit more facial detail when doing close-ups in show than I would normally use, but I threw those in because Brock isn’t Brock without with his angry face crinkles.

One of my main concerns at this point would be the various line weights that I’m using for the outlines are essentially going to be gone if I’m going to go the painted approach to the image.  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about that yet, but I’ll deal with it when arrive at that juncture.  Wish me luck, kids.

Peace, love, and whiskey.  I’m out.  See you next week!