Favor for a friend, 2 of 2

A redrawn style guide image of Donald, redressed as a hoopster going up for a dunk. This will be projected and painted on to a wall...but not by me. Yay!

Favor for a friend, 1 of 2

This is for someone I love, who doesn't seem to understand that being overloaded with work means, no, I don't have time for a 'quick sketch.' How artists out there have friends who think that because you're good at it, it's easy and fast to do anything?

I'm sure they'll be happy with it, but yeah, it's crappy. Lucky they're on my Favorites List!

Too. Damn. Busy.

I can not wait until 6/14, the first day in a two week vacation. I am getting my ass kicked by work right now! Three projects on my plate - but better to complain about work than complain about no work...but man. This kid is getting sleepy.

Here's another Theme Park Review (.com) t-shirt design I did, the first of a few I'm doing for their 2008 trips. They get a gang together and tour a region of roller coaster amusement sites all around the world, with the homebase up near Magic Mountain.

So far I've done a Midwest Tour, a Spain Tour, and a Japan Tour for 2007 - this is for a trip to Europe. Later this summer I 'll be doing one for an East Coast trip. Then another one after that!

This is actually new, but still not one of the three killer projects I have going...sleepy...

The Velvet Marauder

http://velvetmarauder.blogspot.com/

Read it.

It's a diary of an up and coming superhero, balancing his work life, personal life, and night time avenger life. It is fantastic.

Written by my sometimes work partner, Dave Campbell (currently writing for ABC's Live from LA) it is sadly no more, but there is about two years worth of posts, telling the story...which is not yet complete, so hopefully he'll come back to it sooner or later.

I whipped up this illustration for his site, in all his Velvety Glory!

Guardians07

And here's the last bit of the story, and a couple more images.

ACT III

Gearing themselves for a fight that might result in their deaths, they resolve their issues with their fallen comrade. The former Emperor admits he’s had a slight twinge a jealousy for the accolades the hero receives, and the demon had exploited that. Taunting him, manipulating him, the demon drove the seventh Guardian mad, turning him into a power hungry sorcerer, scattering the Guardian tokens to the four winds, destroying the kingdom he once fought to protect.

The hero says that they cannot defeat the demon without acting as a team, as one. The Guardians reunite as the original Seven, and begin their journey through the dark city, to infiltrate the demon’s lair, before it can summon power to restore evil throughout the land.

Along the way, they advance their technology and become stronger than they’d ever been before. After surviving the perils of the city, they reach the lair, and again battle the demon. Unable to win as separate entities against the demon, they join themselves, seven literally become one, represented as a giant mech warrior, magic and technology combined for a massive defender of light and freedom against the demon. A battle of epic proportions, it takes place underground, on the land, in the air, in the sea, it is a battle for the world, and the two fighters know it. The Guardians finally defeat the Demon, and evil again is vanquished. The Guardians return to their respective cities, acting again as protector of the people for as long as need be.

EPILOGUE

Years pass, as they always do, and the world again is prosperous and at peace. The hero approaches the boy, now a man, now the leader of his village, and entrusts him and his family with the tokens. For whenever evil appears the Guardians can again be called upon to protect those who cannot defend themselves…

The slapped together over filtered logo, and a marker of the central city.

Guardians06

So Pete is revealed as the seventh Guardian, the one who has fallen into the control of the Demon. This wasn't yet written at the time of the presentation, but here's a paraphrasing of the backstory.

This character was the youngest of the seven, and he fought the most ferociously, and he volunteered to be the first to serve as an earthbound protector. He lives a solitary life, watching over the kingdom as it grows into prosperity. A few Kings come and go, and then, near the end of his time on earth, the newest King has a daughter. She's super hot, like all princesses should be, and he falls in love. They have a secret love affair, but the demon in his weak and disembodied state, is all seeing and knows about the romance. He starts planting seeds of of rumor to the king, shadowed whispers, books open to stories of the Guardians, and eventually convinces the King his daughter has access a token of Power. So he sets up an ambush at a secret love retreat, it goes wrong in the attempt to capture the Guardian, and the princess is killed. Pete goes apeshit and destroys everyone, and consumed in hate, he takes the king's role and declares himself Emperor. The Demon's plans are finally set into motion, as Pete creates soldiers to enforce his rule, all the time being a puppet to the influences of the Demon.

Here's Pete in all his eviltude.

Guardians05

Here's some more bad art. The rush was on, I banged these out pretty fast, designing 'in illustration' - a no-no. I the ideas were written out, but not a lot of time for exploring, just got the idea out there. This is the manifestation of the Demon, and some of his little minions, which were intended to be fodder for the main characters to cut through.

ACT II

Having awoken the others, and discovered that the protector Guardian has become the evil Emperor who has taken over this world, the remaining six Guardians venture towards a showdown with their former comrade, who somehow has fallen from grace. The Guardians rid the outlying areas of the henchman, who now are enlisted to police the kingdom, the bodies bursting into a dark cloud as they are destroyed.

As the group ventures inward towards the Emperor’s stronghold, the Guardians are amazed at the worlds’ changes, gone was sorcery and magic, replaced by industry and technology, and eventually, decay. As they continue their journey, they apply new technologies to their more traditional weapons and armor, as the closer they get to the kingdom’s center, the henchman are more powerful, and more effort is needed to continue on.

They finally reach the gates of the inner kingdom, which has over the years become a great city of ruin. Standing before the gates is a massive army of henchmen, and atop the archways to the interior, stands a shadowy figure that can only be their lost friend. A massive battle ensues, the greatest the world has ever seen, and the Guardians again triumph. They are broken and exhausted, but they must still face the Emperor, who is more powerful than ever. They begin to battle, six against one, odds seemingly unfair, yet the Emperor holds his own. Finally, the will and strength of the combined six finally overcome, and the Emperor is defeated as his sword shatters.

A sinister, rumbling laughter emits from everywhere. A great voice booms, it is the demon, resurrected. The powers the Emperor used to create his henchmen where small elements of the defeated demon, the sorcery the Emperor utilized helped collect the various remnants into a cohesive embodiment; every time a henchman was destroyed, the matter that animated it was enchanted to return to a central rendezvous, the embodiment of the long ago defeated demon. The last remaining piece to this puzzle was the heart of the demon, trapped in the sword wielded by the Emperor. The sword now broken, the demon is once again whole, and more powerful than before. Casting aside the broken Emperor, his role fulfilled, the demon retreats to its lair deep beneath the city, to finish its plan for world domination.

Battle weary Guardians now face the greatest challenge in their lives. Can they defeat the demon in its full power, with only a fraction of what it took before?

Guardians04

And the rush is on.

Here's Goofy and Pluto, who needed a lot more design work, but time was ticking. All these character had their own tribal themes to their regions, Mickey had that whip, and kind of a string/rope/know motif, his was a fishing and farming village. Minnie had the blade, she lived on sharp cliffs/canyons. Daisy had a wind motif, with the fans, Donald was a water based guy of course, treasure hunters that used their arm armor to weigh them down while searching the depths. Goofy was a plains dweller, he used his sticks to move across the plains from point to point, avoiding hidden predators. And Pluto was part of a cave wolfpack tribe. So that's the rough ideas about where these characters came from.

ACT I

A small boy fishing by the riverside discovers a small emblem that changes the face of his reality. The world, nearly destroyed by the tyranny of the Emperor, is barely hanging on to the vestiges of humanity, despair hangs from the face of every man, woman, and child, hope is gone from nearly every soul. The child, suspecting what he has found, takes the emblem to the center of what was once a village, then a city, and now a village once again, and to the statue of what was once the greatest mythic hero the world had ever known. Placing it into a conspicuously empty space on the statue, he steps back quickly, only to see nothing at all. Dejected, the last shred of hope gone from his young heart, he walks home to his meager shelter.

That night a great storm erupts, lightning crashes, and the statue is alive, once again. The hero returns to a world very much different from the one he remembers. He sets on a quest to rejoin the others in the Guardians, and solve the mystery as to why the world has fallen on such dark times. He seeks out the boy who resurrected him, and is told what the villagers know of this dark world. A dark and vicious warrior has declared himself Emperor, and has dispatched his minions throughout the land. Fueled by chaos and cruelty, these darkly magic henchmen are a terror to humanity. The outlying areas are the least unaffected, but the disease is spreading, more henchman come, soon the outer lands will be overrun as well. He promises the boy, and the rest of the villagers that things will be put right, he is no myth, and the Guardians will fight for good once more.

The hero knows what he must do, his mission is to awaken the other Guardians, and again cleanse the world of all evils…

Guardians03

So those first two images took forever, I needed to pick up the pace and not spend so much time on a pitch. That whole Pirates pitch took about three weeks to put together, 2-3 weeks on two images is ridiculous, even though it was mostly on my own time.

So here is Donald and Daisy.

Backstory-

A great darkness had swept over the land. Evil began to run rampant all over the kingdom’s countryside, manifesting itself into a great demon. Seven warriors were selected from each of the kingdoms townships to face the demon, and attempt to defeat it. Empowered by emblems of virtue, they were each given a token to increase their chances to survive the assault on the demon.

After a long and perilous battle, the demon was finally destroyed, its evil dissipated leaving an empty shell that soon began to rot away. The warriors were hailed as saviors, and were selected to be the police force of the kingdom, driving away the remnants of the evil in its simple forms. Time passed, and the need for the warriors, now named as the Guardians, was coming to an end. The kingdom was at peace, and the Guardians, by the aid of their tokens, had lived long past their years. The warriors decided to leave one behind, to protect the innocent, and alert the spirits of the others if the need arose. A watchful protector, sworn to live amongst the mortals in anonymity, kept his token, and took the tokens of the others for safekeeping. Every century, a different Guardian would come forth to serve time as the lone protector.

The centuries passed, the Guardians, became forgotten history; The statues that stood for so many years were considered decoration as a representation of their cities, not for what they truly were; a vessel from which the individual Guardian could be summoned, if need be. In the seventh century since the Guardians had left the kingdom, the Guardian whose turn it is to serve as the lone protector has long passed, for he is flawed in one small way, because of this, he fails to see that an enemy thought long gone, has rekindled itself like the flicker of the smallest flame…

Guardians02

And here's Minnie.

I had just seen Brotherhood of the Wolf, and I made her face like the girl from that show....so that makes this...2002? These were some the first images I had done fully in the computer. I did do drawings, but the final was all digital. These took about 60 hrs. each, I ashamed to say, now I can bust out a Transformer in about 16-20 hours, but the technique was pretty new to me, I had just used photoshop to color line art up to that point. At Nintendo I did a few but there was a lapse of a couple years before I tried it again. My BFF was doing all digital at the time, I was really impressed with the results he was getting, so I thought I'd try it myself.

So I spent forever making Mickey and Minnie, and the story started to come together...

Guardians01

My heart will never mend over this one. After going around and around with what to do with Mickey, we started to look elsewhere for ideas. If you put Mick in sunglasses and had him say 'Cool!' that was okay. As soon as you made him aggressive, or even current, the designs wouldn't get far. So of course, you bring a name in, and then it's more credible THAN THE PEOPLE YOU HIRED IN THE FIRST PLACE! Not that this is new thing.

So the Senior Producer hired Doug TeNapel and some of his pals to come up with stuff, Nightmare...something else...and Mickey. The Mickey stuff was just okay, but one image really stuck out, a dude in a Mickey suit. Mickey, but tough, like an X-Men 1 Mickey.

We thanked them, and promptly stuck all their hard work in a folder and disappeared it. But that image stuck with me, and the producer and I would bitch about the company's lack of vision, blah, blah...happens all the time. I couldn't stop working it around in my head, so I started drawing. Kingdom Hearts* was humming along, and the US heads finally realized it might be valid, so I took a Japanese slant to the story and design.

I was really inspired by the Magna Carta stuff that was floating around the internet at the time, so I combined the two ideas, and after this image was done, the story started to come to me...

*If anyone American tells you that they greenlit Kingdom Hearts, and they knew it was gold...they are a lying liar. The lack of support from the US offices was amazing. It never would have happened if the US guys had a say. Literally in the Japan offices, Disney and Square were a floor apart, the dudes rode the same elevator to work everyday with each other, and casually said, 'hey, we should do something together.' Then it came together, and the buzz got huge, now everyone was responsible for the success. Sigh, same as it always was.