marvin&gossamer

This client commissions artists to render established cartoon characters but in their own style as if
they had themselves originally created them. I was honored to be invited to join his gallery of
collected art and chose Looney Tunes' Marvin the Martian and his sometime associate Gossamer
for a horror/sci-fi theme. I wanted to design Marvin as more of a deadly cosmic warlord and
elaborate on making Gossamer more monstrous. But it's tough capturing that 'threatening'
image with them wearing their sneakers, though:-) I happened to crop their feet here since
I preferred a close-up but, had I not, MTM would've had boots and M would've had bare
feet. I kept what I could from their original designs and added what I needed to to fit my
interpretation. I went through several prelims, one of which is shown on the left but the one
I finally settled on came out too light to scan(above). As usual with my solo jobs, I pencil
loosely and often make major changes along the way while inking. You name it: brush,
marker, quill(not accepted well by the board & I had to clean up my flash lines), razor scrapings,
drybrush, spatter, finger smudges & grainy china marker...I used my full assortment of inking
tools & FX on this small 8.5 X 11 image. This one was completed on 10/31/03. Happy Halloween!!