Hey all!

So, in the spirit of DFD's/ilovedoodle's immaculate collab and blog for the making of Whale Rider together, I have decided to jettison my usual million word march style on collaboration blogs to make four as-mini-as-possible versions of how four recent collabs went from big dreams to actually beautiful lines of things. I'm already writing too much here, so onward we go!


With MichaelBisparulz:



With bennyd302:



With Laser Bread:



With buko:






First Up:




The idea:

Piggybacks And Chicken Fights: This would take place in a barn scene, with possibly the traditional silhouettes or far-away sketches of a barn and an old-fashioned windmill, possibly a tractor as well. In the foreground would be two pigs standing upright, with chickens on their shoulders engaged in some playful shoving of each other. We would literally be having piggybacks from the chickens on top of the pig’s backs, and chicken fighting as well because the pigs are holding up the chickens while they are engaged in the eons-old tradition of girls in bikinis being held on the backs of college jocks playfully trying to make the other fall into the water. They would be doing this in a mud patch though since it would be on a farm and with pigs as the bottom level of the chicken fight. The characters would be drawn very cartoonishly and with a goofy atmosphere, we could even have a couple pigs, chickens or other farm animals around cheering them on.

Michael sent this to me, impressing me with how perfect he got the feel from the very first and nearly final draft:



I asked Michael if he thought he could fit a small farmhouse behind the scene to add to the farm idea of the design, which he tried to do but said it made the design too unbalanced. The next update was the final piece, nothing needing to be changed amazingly:



Man, that was a piece of cake! Bispa does indeed Rulz!




Next up!:



The idea:

Pinball Wizard: To pay homage to the Who song of the same name, a wizard playing a pinball game (possible title and theme: “Fantasy Frenzy!” complete with a unicorn possibly fighting a dinosaur decal on the side of it) from a 3/4ths perspective would be the main image. The person playing the game could be a variety of pop-cultural wizards, from Merlin-ish to Gandalf, complete with crazy hat on or laid on the side of the machine, and his staff, also titled against the game machine. He would be ranking up an amazingly insane and long score as he would be the ultimate pinball wizard player!

Ben's first version:



I suggested to Ben that we have the wizard more Gandalf-y, to change the dragon to little kids and then we decided on hobbits, to change the name of the game to "Fantasy Frenzy", to have a very high score on the board and to have a "high score!" sign as well lit up.

Ben's reply:



I made suggestions that we should move the hobbit away from the staff since it looked like he was now holding it, and having some hobbits on the other side of the pinball machine, one on top of the other one's back.

Ben asked if maybe we should do it in a more simple style with less details, and sent this version over to me:



I told Ben I preferred the more detailed version we were already working on, and Ben agreed to give it another go and sent me this:



Suggestions: chaging the wizard's facial expression by making him look more concentrated yet still seem pleased and warm, illuminating the face when we go to color, making the hobbit with glasses on face more excited and to change the glasses slightly, have a high score circle in red at the top of the pinball game, and adding some more zeroes and numbers to the high score.

Ben's next version:



More suggestions!: Putting just the FF instead of Fantasy Frenzy on the top of the machine and maybe putting a crest with swords around it to keep the medieval theme, having the wizard's face somewhere between the "blown away" version of the and the kinder, gentler face of the new wizard version, and possible elements for the left side of the piece: bringing a piece of the dragon back, a table with an energy drink and change on it, etc.



Ben and I decided there was no real reason to have something in the corner of the design, it was already crammed full of fun details so Ben started the coloring process:



Suggestions, what a surprise: Changing the distance between the wizard and the pinball machine, more light illuminating the energy coming off the wizard's hands, having the high score sign and light colors leaping off the shirt, giving a vine-y border (Dragons Lair inspired) to the top of the unit, and having even more smoke/sparks coming out of the back of the machine.

Ben's next version:



We're nearing the end! Suggestions included making the staff a bit thicker, adding more smoke/sparks once again, a tad more lighting to the high score sign, having another effect or symbol around the Fantasy Frenzy graphic on the side of the machine since it kind of competes with the energy style coming off the wizard's hands.

Another version:



So close to finished! I asked Ben if he could chip a few bits off the top of the staff leaning up against the machine, and taking a bit off the neck of the unicorn on the side of the pinball game as well as maybe having another idea around the unicorn or have some kind of pattern or effect behind it. I wasn't being as helpful as I wanted to but i knew it wasn't there yet and I was hoping Ben could decode what i couldn't express for the graphic, and he came through in spades:



Done and done!





Number three!:



The idea:

Rock Paper Scissor Peace March: What if all the rock, paper and scissors of the world got together and decided they didn’t want to fight one another any more? We could have a rally coming towards the viewer of the shirt, with lots of different kinds of rocks, paper and scissors mixed in with one another, the ones at the front holding a banner that goes above the rest of the crowd and flanks them which states “Rock/Paper/Scissor Peace March” or something like that. The instruments of so many finger battles could have their arms around one another, supporting one another and holding picket signs such as a rock holding “Rock Beats No One, Loves All”, paper holding “When Only One Of Us Wins, Everyone Loses”, scissor holding “End The Faceoffs” and whatever else we could think up for signs for them to hold!

After this Brock had a number of really specific and detail-oriented questions for me that really impressed me and made me feel like he was truly interested in my input, as if it was helping him formulate the final way he wanted to go with the idea before drawing one line of it. They ranged from where the banner should be in the design, what the banner should say and if we should punctuation in it, how diverse the papers and scissors should be, and sending him a bunch of banners for the RPS to hold, which I sent Brock these:

Paper:

-When Only One Of Us Wins, Everybody Loses

-Paper Hugs Rock

-Give Peace A Chance

Scissors:

-A sign that has two fingers held up in the peace/scissor sign of a v, with an equals sign pointing to a traditional graphic peace sign, and a circle with a crossed-out line in front of some bloody scissors or some other symbol that signifies war or the violence of the RPS game.

-1,2,3.....Peace!

-No More Cutting, Only Loving

Rock:

-End The Faceoffs

-Rock Beats No One, Loves All

-Make Friends, Not War


I also suggested at this time we have some of the rocks and scissors and such have their "arms" around one another, maybe a couple doodles of hearts and etc on a piece of paper, and baby versions of scissors or paper holding the adult's hand.

And finally, the first sketch came, almost completely formulated and nearly the completed version:



And another version of the first amazing sketch that had a few of Brock's notes on it:



And after I had NO suggestions whatsoever for the sketches Brock sent me, the nearly final version was sent on over in a couple days:



A few final suggestions from me were made, such as adding some clouds to the scene to make it gel more in the environment, to change some of the rock colors in front to make them more diverse, and to change the sign the scissor on the right was holding to a flower.

The next version would be the final piece from Brock!:






And last but certainly not least:



The idea (which most of the time I send a bunch of concepts to each artist to choose, but I only sent this one to Enkel hoping he would like to do it with me since i knew his style would be perfect for it):

Honey Moon: Taking the phrasing of that term quite literally, we would have a moon in the center of the design, but it would be textured with beehives and honeycombs. There would be giant bees going in and out of the moon, possibly a couple flying around in space as well. The honey on the moon would be flowing out of it, and dripping down towards earth or just space in general. I also imagine astronauts wearing beekeeper outfits roaming around the moon or where the moon is dripping below, trying to harness and catch as much of the honey as possible. We could also connect the stars in space with something of the honey floating around in space, making up the look of stars as well? We can work on more details...

Buko's first drawing of the idea:



Lots of suggestions abounded from here, with lots of them not making the final cut: having some spots of light shining out of the honeycomb moon, more honey drips coming out of the moon, some forming constellations and such, the bees being turned into space shuttles with mechanical wings, giving the astronauts beekeeper helmets and veils like this reference pic:



Enkel sent version two on over:



He also suggested after talking to a friend that we add Earth into the background to give the piece more of a grounding in space and for people to understand that this supposed to be the moon even quicker. I suggested a drop of honey turns into the earth below the moon or just have the Earth much smaller and below the moon way in the distance. I also asked if we could add the beekeeper hat to the second astronaut near the bottom as well, working the mechanical bee into a space shuttle with bee-like features, and taking a reference photo of the actual moon and putting that texture underneath the honeycomb texture so that the piece gives more of a bump, crater moon-like feel to it.

Enkel's next version:



The next round of suggestions included possibly bumping the texture of the moon to make it even more noticeable and the color to make it glow again, scraping the mechanical bee and just having all the bees look like giant normal versions of the real things, and having the beekeepernauts attached to one or two space shuttles.

Another update from Enkel:



We're nearly there now, I only asked Enkel to darken in the other beekeeper hat and to play around a bit with the size of the space shuttle and earth as they seemed a bit too intrusive to the main honey moon now.

SUCCESS! Enkel's final version:





Yippie!