Dracula Fail-Whale

 

"Whale" we made it through "hump" day

"Whale" we finally made it through "hump" day and it's Thursday, and from what I can tell we're suppose to have a great weekend weather wise. Which is great because this Sunday (10-10-10) is Pittsburgh's Zombie Walk at Station Square Downtown, PA!! Now is that frickin' awesome or what?! I'll be taking some pics and talking about the things that went on in case you miss it; but really you should be there if you like zombies, it promises to be a kick-a$$ event.

Supposedly there's going to be 3000-4000 people attending this thing, so I'm thinking Sheeits gunna get mad real. There's going to be some really cool bands like the Motorpsychos (my person local fav), contest, celebrity guest and all kinds of  krazy

Dracula Fail-Whale

Backstory: This was actually a custom T-shirt design I was making for one of my dearest friends; that entered my T-shirt contest back when I decided it was a hot idea to make a T-shirt web store without having a crap load of designs ready first...."a set back fail"

So as a disparate attempt to come up with fresh ideas, I decided to have a little contest. The rules were simple, send me a basic random concept you'd like to seen drawn on a shirt like, "cupcake ninjas" ( hey, that's actually not a bad idea) and I'll draw my interpretation of if it. The winner gets the design I pick, sent to them for free! sounds cool huh?! The contest was going to be every month, but I got wrap up in other important things like...like Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: the Game.

My old roomie and close friend came up with the original thumbnail design and I put a spin of my style on it. I drew it with pencil and inked it with black pens and markers then colored it in Photoshop. 

I decided to go with lots of sharp black shadows for this, to add a real horror movie kind of feel to it. I'm a big fan of the guy that does Hellboy and Screw on Head, his art style with the way he uses shadows influences a great deal of my work. Now that I said that, I'm sure you'll pick up on it with a big, "ooooohhh yeah I see it now!" 

The thick shadows I feel lets the viewer use more of their imagination to carry the image a little further in their own mind Vs. me flat out showing and spoon feeding everything to the viewer. It's kind of like when you're sleeping at night and that pile of dirty laundry on the chair looks like me holding a knife waiting for you to go to sleep. 

Coloring the wings was a bit of a pain, I really didn't know a good way to go about doing it without making it look too cartoony. I used a watercolor tool brush and a layer mask then just did long brush strokes of how I wanted the wings inside to be shaped, shaded and textured; I'm very happy it worked out in the look I wanted. I also used the same technique in the sky background, but I also used a smudge and blur tool on a different layer of brighter colors the give the sky a little personality not just depth.

Everyone's favorite part is the blood squirting blowhole, it wasn't in the original thumbnail it's just something I added in last sec in the sketch because I'm cheesy like that. 

One of the many things about my art is you'll notice even though the concept idea is a bit wacky. I like to add in one more cheesy elements to it, just to throw it over the top of sarcasm and maybe a little irony...it's kind of like my calling card.