"I Didn't Do It" ("Bad Boys 2")
Darth Vader (c) Lucasfilm
This was one of those pictures we had every summer: the kind where no matter how much we knocked our brains, we just couldn't come up with a reasonable idea. It also happened to be one of those pictures neither Jake nor I wanted to do so it stayed unassigned until about a week before our deadline. Then I had it. All the bad guys of the Plight universe could be standing around a water-cooler discussing their recent routings by our favorite hero (and on a side note, anyone who knows the story of Plight would know that couldn't happen). The problem was I only knew what one archenemy, Rahistal, looked like and at the time, I was uncomfortable drawing him accurately. Yeah, I could have called up Jake and ask for their designs of his other villains, but he was at work and I was eager to start drawing.
What I wound up doing was taking a couple of characters I did know: Darth Vader because everyone knows Anakin went evil, and appearing for the first time in the gallery, Plight's B-level enemy, Maximum Overload. That's not the way he really looks but I knew he was overweight, wore a cap backwards and was missing half of an arm. So, I drew my approximation (*cough* artistic license *cough*) of the two bad guys with Erik standing in a police line-up. Get it? "Bad Boys"? A "Cops" reference and a couple of bad boys? Not too shabby, right?
On a side note, I colored this illustration while bottle feeding a one-month old baby and talking to Jake via Instant Messenger, all at the same time!!! Despite the distractions and contortions required, I have to say it turned out surprisingly good. More proof to my theory a good coloring job can improve a sub-par picture. - Tony