Inktober 2017 - Zeiram (1991)

Zeiram

Well, I'm off to a bit of a late start this year, but it's time for Inktober 2017, which I usually use as an opportunity to mash-up with Halloween to feature various monster movies and such.

In this case, I decided to go with Zeiram (1991), a semi-obscure Japanese Sci-Fi/Monster movie.  The movie starts strong, with an awesome prison break from an alien Super-Max by an unstoppable killing machine, Zeiram (the scene was shot in stylized black-and-white).  They did a great job of building him up, but by the end the movie devolved into our plucky, female bounty hunter, Iria, fighting a series of rubber-suited monsters.  Overall, I thought it was fun, but the potential from the greatness of the opening scenes was lost by the regression to the mean for sci-fi monster movies and standard sci-fi/monster tropes.  Still, Zeiram as a monster has stuck with me, with his unique look.

Zeiram had a really creepy "Flesh Core" (even the name "Flesh Core" is creepy), with a tiny female face in the center of his hat, and a snakelike body.  Most of the time, the face in his hat had it's eyes closed, but once they opened and opened its fanged mouth smiled, death and destruction followed...

Smile!  The "Face" on Zeiram's hat / Flesh Core.

The Work in Progress is below for those interested.  For those not interested, the Work in Progress is still below, I guess.

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STEP ONE:  Here are the pencils, lightly sketched out with a 6B pencil on 9" x 12" Strathmore Bristol board.

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STEP TWO:  Taking a .07mm Needle Tip GelPen, I drew out the basic line work from the pencil drawing.

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STEP THREE:  I then took a Pitt Brush Pen and No. 8 brush with ink and filled in the dark and shadow areas.

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STEP FOUR:  I then scanned it into Photoshop and colorized it in a stylized manner, using a Multiply Layer.

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This was done with pen-and-ink and colorized in Photoshop.

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