Paint Smudges: No matter how many times we dealt with it, having to tackle a movie based on a Marvel Comics property as the first release of the season never got easy. We found ourselves racking our brains figuring out what to base a picture on without outright using said property. Sure, it was a creative challenge and kept us on our game, but it was challenging nevertheless. And I thought I'd get off easy that year when Tony decided he'd like to pencil it. Of course I'm not a fool so there was no complaining on my end. As soon as he was done coming up with an idea and putting it to paper, I'd be all ready to ink and color. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way.
Originally he imagined an old 1930's pulp magazine cover with Erik confronted giant robots hulking over him with their hands open for attack. But the idea didn't pan out as these things sometimes do. For me personally, I can't count the number of pictures I've had in my mind which refuse to come out when I try to illustrate them. So Tony decided instead he'd homage a scene from "Iron Man 2" which featured heavily in the trailer: that of Iron Man and War Machine back-to-back ready to fight an army of battle armored soldiers. Only difference in our pic it would be Erik and the Tin Man from the "Wizard of Oz" ready to mix it up with a horde of flying monkeys. I thought the idea was fine and again, I was all ready to ink and color. Unfortunately that didn't work out either.
A week before our collaboration was going to debut, Tony handed me a drawing of Erik and the Tin Man (immediately I thought he did an awesome Tin Man) on a single sheet of paper. On another sheet was.... well, we don't know what it was. Tony thought it was a flying monkey but even though he was the one who drew it, he wasn't absolutely certain. And that was it. No other monkeys, no background. Just Erik and the Tin Man standing back to back taking up 1/3rd of the space with no grand army to face. "It's okay" he replied, "you can just draw in some generic robots."
Heh.
Now I put my friend in some tight spots passing off some of the penciled drawings I've done so I'm the last soul to wag my finger. And again, I understand sometimes it's hard to come up with something which has so many restrictions creatively in the first place. But I will state for the record this picture completely absolved me from any and all sins I may have committed in the past and any comments my co-hort made about me coming short in our wonderful collaborations was hence forth stricken from any public record from now until the end of eternity and then some. So it was written, so it will be abide. Amen.
Anyhow, as you can see I didn't settle on generic robots. Since we already had the Tin Man included, and our first "Iron Man" picture was based on Erik in the company of other cybernetic beings in the fictional realm, it only felt right we kept that loose theme going. So I did up a list of metallic characters from comics, film, and videogames and by process of elimination weeded them out to see what would and wouldn't work (for example, I originally planned on sketching C3P0 but felt he was too similar to Maria from "Metropolis"). From there I did my best sketching out the rest of the candidates; also eliminating a few I discovered were too much of a pain to draw (such as the Daleks which makes my inner Doctor Who fan cry). 73 hours later with the occasional breaks for sleeping, eating, and working, entry # 115 was finished.
Obviously it has its faults, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out. - Jake
Pencil Marks: Let me start this off by congratulating Jake and a picture well done. He took what I gave him and improved it a thousand fold. But man did he miss the point.
My reason for generic robots was simple and to the point. The picture was based on the movie Iron Man, so instead of iron I switched alloys and made it Tin Man. In my head the two of them would be fighting a group of 1930's style sci-fi robots which were all the same make and build. That way it wouldn't take away from the main joke of using the Tin Man. But as you can see things didn't work out that way.
I don't blame anyone here but myself (and since the picture turned out so good there really isn't any blame to be passed around), but I should have just gotten passed my personal obstacles and just finished the pencils myself. Lesson learned.
Jake did a stand up job with his half of the pencils which actually if truth be told are far more substantial than my pencil duties. And I guess I like how the picture kind of fits thematically with our original Iron Man picture.
All in all I think it is a decent effort - but I wish I was able to stick with my original idea of a pulp novel cover, because instead of starting the 2010 year with a home run we just managed a base hit. Or a 4 ball walk. - Tony
