Weekend Digression

Sorry for the delay between posts but this weekend, 3/5's of the Element X crew (Amado, Marcus, and myself) got together to check out some art from our respective projects and enjoy a trip to a few local comic shops. Anytime we get together, the pretty pictures are free flowin' and hours start disappearing. But the comradre of fellow artists cannot be equaled; it helps to recharge the creative batteries and it pushes you to draw more/better. So once we go our separate ways, the desire to draw left behind is hard to resist.

Anytime you work on a project, it can get easy to lose your focus and begin wavering. Not that ONE is losing it's fun factor but changing gears and drawing something completely different helps on a lot of levels. It keeps you fresh as an artist, forcing you to utilize your skills beyond the task at hand. It changes your artistic perspective. You learn to work out problems by exposing yourself to illustrating new things. And hopefully, you can add that newfound knowledge to your skill set.

You hear it all the time from the pros out there that are working on a monthly title. They start their day with a quick sketch, allowing their mind and body to loosen up before going into full sequential mode.

So...having purchased the Krazy Kids' Food! Vintage Food Graphics book recently, I wanted to take a stab at designing a fake retro cereal box. While my girlfriend was watching a 3-hour made-for-television Audrey Hepburn movie starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, I started skeching and came up with this:


Perky Pete's Pigtails. Heh. I also came up with Happy Hippo's Hoops and Surly Sergio's Sombreros. I'll get to them soon enough. As for Perky Pete, here's the colored version, sans cereal box design:


After scanning the pencils, I just dug in and finished it in Photoshop. The actual cereal was probably the hardest part. Coming up with the name was easy. But drawing actual cereal pigtails? Not so much. I also did a few designs for the bowl but quickly realized that a detailed design, however retro, would go against the simplicity of the overall drawing.

After a few hours of work, here's the full-blown retro cereal box:



And because I couldn't resist...
The whole thing took the better part of my Sunday. What can I say, I'm a little anal about design and I wanted to make sure it was perfect (plus, as hard as it may be to believe, I didn't mind missing out on the Audrey Hepburn flick, even if it was Jennifer Love Hewitt's best acting performance to date...next to Scream, because, well, she screamed...alot). But the whole process was worthwhile. I'm pretty happy with the drawing and I learned a few Photoshop shortcuts that I'll take with me when I go back to ONE. Problem is, now I can't wait to work on Happy Hippo's Hoops and Surly Sergio's Sombreros.

If there were only more hours in the day there'd be time enough at last (a little Twilight Zone reference for those not in the know).

Bernie