September 25, 2010

Sass and Satan

It has been a couple of late nights. Not once have I started my daily drawing before midnight;( And the past few times as I scraped myself up the house steps and sunk into a chair like ice cream, I began my yearly James Bond-a-thon.  My dreams have been super weird too, maybe late night snacking is to blame. My roommie is on night shifts for one more week of havoc on my schedule.

I don't know what I was thinking, maybe it's an extension of the pirate thing an my idea the other night to go as the devil for Hallowe'en this year. This cheerleader dressed sassy pants was drawn with HB pencil.  I added a skull where a basketball may have been. She has an evil clam/crab/little shop of horrors/ claw coming from beneath her skirt an that is where the sass comes from, near her ass.
After teaching my first animation class of the season, I grabbed this great graphic novel from the Quickdraw library called SEAWEED. It was a good read, instead of going out to the bar, I saw stuff that made me want to improve my craft. It made me feel like I have a long way to go, but with renewed inspiration, an that is always a good thing!

The artist, Ben Balistreri's work is exceptional. I love his extremes and the use of animals in his character design, he has won an Emmy for his character design work. Guess what, he has a blog!!!!!!! Check his stuff out his stuff HERE......if you have not just discovered him like I have.  He has this little devil character on one of the panels and I decided to do my take on him and see what I can gather. One thing is to use col-erase pencils for the initial thumbnail. I didn't have any on hand so I used HB.  He also said 'white out" is our friend.  Hmmm, I 'd better pick some of that up! I had a lot of fun using my prismacolor to play with the image.
I really like the idea of the devil having kinda useless hoof hands, it makes him way less threatening and far more clumsy. The Little wings and a silly looking body takes away from his ominous power.
I wanted him to have a trident fork of fire and a tail a dinosaur would be jealous of.  His soul patch is akin to a skunks however rather than peppery patchouli, it smells more of fire and brimstone. So that's Satan so far.

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