"Another Sunny Day"("Prince of Persia")


Paint Smudges: Getting the idea for Prince of Persia was one of the easiest things in the world - a live action movie from Disney, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, based on a videogame and an upcoming ride at the DisneyWorld vacation resort? Why does that sound familiar? Well aside from the videogame portion, its because it pretty much sums up the Pirates of the Caribbean movies - and since we had such a successful running joke through those movies I felt it was the right thing to do to keep that same joke going through what can only be seen as a near-sequel to those Johnny Depp movies. Convincing Jake took a little time, but thankfully as you can see above he finally did agree.
Oddly though - when I did the first picture for the Pirates flicks it was a simple pic with a simple line of dialogue, and it was also the last one I had a hand in. Things must have changed though because what Jake handed me a few weeks ago consisted of SIX different elements, characters on different pages and in differing sizes, a background that didn't really fit any of the characters, and no dialogue at all. Jake just looks at me and says: "I know you can do it." Bastard.
There was a bit of worry though midway through - my inks looked horrible, the scanned inks looked even worse. I was honestly afraid that this picture would fall apart at the last second and the two of us would have to scramble to find a workable solution. But something happened in the coloring - a bit of magic (it has to be) came through the computer and transformed this picture into something that I am extremely proud of. I don't know where it happened, but all the elements came together, the resizing and placing all worked. Honestly - NOTHING on that page above was on the same page with each other in the beginning, but you'd never know it from just looking at it. I think its beautiful - and a great continuation of our "joke".
Of course with a FOURTH Pirates movie in pre-production and a "conceived" second and third movie planned in the Prince of Persia saga - this "joke" may be used for years and years to come. - Tony

Pencil Marks: As Tony said, my pencilled contribution to this picture wound up being done on four different sheets of paper. Four sheets so insanely out of porportion with each other that even two figures I drew on the same sheet weren't even properly lined up with each other. Even the background I shouldn't have had any problems with came out being more minimalistic than either Tony and I had planned (our original idea was to show more of the pirate ship). It was, before Tony got his hands on it, quite awful. And while I had a lot of enthusiasm the entire time I worked on it, I just couldn't get that level of excitement to translate onto the page. Seriously, if artists are capable of coming down with some weird illness which distorts their illustrating and perspectives, or there's such a thing as 'artists block', then I had a really bad case of it.
That is why this picture was done up on four sheets of paper: because we had to use only the good parts and throw away the rest. True, this isn't the first PSBG picture where the pencilled art came in sections like a jigsaw puzzle (the first would be our homage to "X-3: The Final Stand" which I'll point out Tony pencilled), but I will admit this one was much more troublesome. For all the times we've done a picture in multi-sections, this one easily takes the prize. So I absolutely give all the credit to Tony this came out well and actually better than I expected. I knew he'd be able to pull it off (I actually did) and I'm glad I was right.
Now there's one more thing I feel I should mention; something that falls under 'possible subconscious reasoning'. When I handed Tony the illustration of the woman in the crowd, he immediately said "So, Jessica Rabbit is in this picture?". Now I just thought I had drawn your typical soccer mom that didn't have much time to pretty herself up so she came off looking a little trashy. At no point was I picturing Jessica Rabbit. But when Tony's wife took a look at it awhile later (and without hearing Tony's response), she too immediately pointed out it looked like her. And that got me thinking: knowing this picture took place in a Disney theme park, was I unconsciously drawing Jessica Rabbit into it? I don't know and really, it's not important since Tony was able to alter it. But I just thought it's worth mentioning nevertheless. - Jake