"Honoring the Gods" ("The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor")
It's Jake's fault.
When he couldn't come up with an idea for "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" and got the genius notion to just continue with the thought train I had instituted for the first flick, it turned into one of our most successful running gags. It also got me in the mood to "re-do" one of our earlier works. I mean Jake goes back all the time and retouches his previous works, why can't I? But the opportunity never really came about.
Then one brisk afternoon while we were sitting at our round table (a purely theoretical round table of course) trying to come up with concepts for the upcoming films, I was focusing long and hard on "Mummy 3". I wanted to do it justice because it was a "sequel" to our first SMB gallery pic, so I loaded up the picture and examined it. I still look back at it with fondness, but to tell you the truth it just hasn't aged well. Long story short, I got it into my head to play homage by redoing it - not line by line, but more thematically.
It took me an hour to pencil it and once it was done, I immediately handed it off to Jake. It was hard for me to let go because after that I was cringing for weeks hoping Jake wouldn't screw it up. I wanted this one to be special; a sort of measurement how far we've grown as artists, so I didn't want us to crash and burn on this.
Just goes to show I should have more faith in my buddy. Jake obviously spent a lot more time on this than I ever would have. The Egyptian carvings, the texture of Kari's bandages, the open flames, the gleam of the various gold materials... he put so much care into heightening this picture not only was it my second favorite picture of 2008 ("E-Rik" being my first) but I look back and wish this had been our 100th picture rather than "The Dark Knight".
That's Jake fault too. He did the planning so blame him. - Tony