"Formal Affair '05"
When Tony and I launched our first website (Crimsonpug.com) back in 1997, I had come up with a piece called "Formal Affair" to mark the big occasion, which you can see to the right. For the first week it served as our main index picture for the rambling section before we placed it into the Plight section for the exact same reason.
True, it wasn't anything to write home about even back then. The characters' porportions were awful, the stark black background sucked away the joyfulness out of it, and who would have thought a strapless red dress could look so hideous? But aside from all its weak points there still was some charm to it. To me it was the pin-up I liked to hate. I wasn't alone either. Most people disliked it too, and yet it held some importance.
Eventually it was time to post something new and more exciting. So because I had already grown a little better as an artist, and instead of archiving it somewhere on the website, I just removed it all together. Lost, but not certainly forgotten in my files of junk.
Fast forward to January 2005. After fourteen months of it literally being on life-support, Tony and I decided we were ready to bring back Crimsonpug.com with a vengence. And while the Plightsite would remain the tentpole of the whole operation and it's own little entity, we both agreed it'd be nice to have something new 'Plight related' for the grand re-opening to post over there.
Now aside from the pages I've already completed for the comic book, I try not to redo things I've already done (actually, I shouldn't be touching the comic pages either!). But the circumstances here were different and "Formal Affair" was something I felt I had to come back to. Nothing else would have been more appropriate and fitting. A visual comparison to how far we've gone. So for the week leading up to the big re-launch this was the picture prominently welcoming everyone back. It enjoyed its nice little moment in the spotlight before the site finally debuted and the picture was removed for lack of using it for anything else. And thus everything came around full circle.
Well... almost everything. Almost a year later Crimsonpug.com closed down for the second time, and sadly for good. However this time the picture's not going to be removed. -Jake