For all the years Tony and I would sneak some of our favorite pop culture properties into the gallery, I never drew a picture with characters from one of my favorite television shows, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" until this illustration. The closest I came was every Christmas I'd post an annual picture of Erik exposing his MST3k boxers for one reason or another. But never, not even sketches or doodles, had Erik crossed paths with Joel, Mike, or the Bots. And if you knew me back in those days, that was unusually strange given if I wasn't working on some Plight project or another, I'd be watching old reruns of MST3k on DVD.
So, if I was going to do this, it would have to be something special. I know, I can be such a dork. But I didn't want to rush it. I wanted this to be one of the standouts of the year, if not the gallery. I was so anal-retentive to make Crow and Tom Servo look exactly the way they're supposed to look. And when it came to the formations on the Satellite of Love's back wall, it was a mixture of items on the actual program, familiar shapes Tony and I wanted to include, and doodles Kaitlin contributed.
On a historical note, this is the only picture Tony and I ever co-colored together. My friend had a love affair with Will Smith movies coming out every Fourth of July weekend. He called them "Big Willy Weekends". And if we were going to be homaging a Will Smith film, he had a duty to himself to participate. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of chemotherapy so even the simplest of tasks were taking a lot out of him. But he insisted on being included on this one. What we wound up doing is having Tony lay down the primary colors while I handled the shading, backgrounds, and touch-ups. In hindsight, it was extremely time-consuming than normal. But neither of us could argue with the results when it was finished. - Jake