Unwanted Valentines: The Thing: Crab-Head

UNWANTED VALENTINES

The Thing: Crab-Head

This Valentine Card uses the Crab-Head creature from John Carpenter's "The Thing".

I first saw John Carpenter's "The Thing" when I was a teenager and thought it was awesome!  I always loved monster movies--and the monsters in this one were ultra-creepy, almost mangaesque in their horrific body distortions--and this version was an exercise in tension and paranoia.  While I saw the 2011 prequel to "The Thing" and thought it was pretty good, the John Carpenter version will remain the canonical version to my mind.  Most of the practical effects hold up pretty well, although, with that said, I wished they had gone through and digitally "sweetened" some of the effects when they released "The Thing" on Blu-Ray.

* * *

STEP ONE:  I did some rough pencils using a blue-lead on 8-1/2" x 11" paper, then inked it with a No. 1 size script/round brush.

* * *

STEP TWO:  After I scanned it into PhotoShop and cleaned it up, I created a Duplicate Layer, set it to MULTIPLY under Properties and colorized it, then added the lettering and called it DONE!

* * *

Done with brush and ink on 8-1/2" x 11" paper and digitally colored in PhotoShop. 

.