March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 - Part 6

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019

(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

Well, it's my last submission to the March M.O.D.O.K. Madness Blog for 2019!  The month just flew past, faster than a NOS-fueled Mechano-Chair!

In this case, it is a callback to the side-scrolling video games of yesteryear, with their pixels and jaggies in all their 16-bit glory.  Yes, it's M.O.D.O.K. vs. Arnim Zola, engaged in... MORTAL KOMBAT!  [Queue the titular 90's techno song.]

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STEP ONE: Here is a little peek behind the curtain with a scan of the original doodle which became this post.  It was just a quickly scribbled idea in a sketchbook (about 30-to-60 seconds), but it ended up pretty close to the finished drawing.

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STEP TWO:  These are the digital pencils, done on two separate levels--one for the characters of M.O.D.O.K. and Arnim Zola, the other with the slightly Kirby-esque background.  As usual, they are just a quickly scribbled mess to give a rough idea of what goes where.

The original drawing canvas is 2,100px by 1,500px at 300dpi.

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STEP THREE:  And here are the digital inks, done in Clip Studio Paint.

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STEP FOUR:  Followed by the colors, which were done on a separate Multiply Layer.  Hmmm, now that I look at it, I probably should have done the Cosmic Cube in blue outline.  Oh, well.  Live and learn.  Well, live, anyways...

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STEP FIVE:  And, finally, to get it to look like a right-proper 16-bit video game screen, it took a surprising amount of trail-and-error.  Originally, I imported it into Photoshop, dropped the resolution from 300dpi to 72dpi.  But, Photoshop was anti-aliasing it, so it just looked blurry as heck and not like an old 16-bit video game.  

Finally, I figured out to use the Resample option for "Nearest Neighbor (hard edges)" when resizing it, which kept aliasing and made the downshift in quality jaggy in all the right ways.  

So, for those of you nerdy enough to care: It went from the original 2,100px by 1,500px at 300dpi, then shrank the image way down to 504px by 360px at 72dpi while keeping the aliasing, then blew it back up to 1,200px by 857px at 200dpi.  Ta-da!

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This was done digitally in Clip Studio Paint with an assist from Photoshop.

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March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 - Part 5

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019

(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

Oh, my, yet another March M.O.D.O.K. Madness submission!  I'm pretty sure I'm wearing out my welcome to poor Pedro and Brendan with all the spamming I've done of their mailbox this year... 

I actually had this idea last year, but wasn't able to get around to it 'til now.  But, I thought it would be funny to have M.O.D.O.K. being hypnotized by a fake Cosmic Cube ala the Anglerfish, with some rather large, sharp teeth just at the edge of the panel.

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STEP ONE:  Here are the digital pencils, done in Clip Studio Paint on a 1,400px x 1,500px canvas, at 300dpi.

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STEP TWO:  And here are the digital inks.  Nothing too fancy, although I intended to colorize the line work for the "Cosmic Cube" to a blue color.

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STEP THREE:  I did the coloring in Clip Studio Paint, then moved it over to Photoshop for converting the image to 200dpi and saving as a .jpg.  Photoshop, naturally, has a much better engine for saving images as .jpg's.

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint -- with an assist from Photoshop.

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March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 - Part 4

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019

(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

Hey, it's another March M.O.D.O.K. Madness submission!  This time, done in a more Cubist vein (eat your heart out, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso... oh, wait, that pun was completely unintentional--shame on me for missing it the first time through).

I was half-tempted to make it even more abstract and just the barest suggestion about it being M.O.D.O.K., with more geometrical breaks in the picture plane  Maybe next time...

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STEP ONE:  Here is the quick breakdown of the Cubist concept on a 1,200px x 1,600px at 300ppi canvas

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STEP TWO: And... done!  Well, pretty much all that was left to do was extend the planes a little bit, accentuate the edges here and there, and push a few shadows to give the illusion of depth (well, as much depth as you can get with a Cubist-style drawing).  I dropped the resolution down to 200dpi, and the image to 1,000px x 1,333px--suitable for posting.

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Done digitally in Painter 2019.

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March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 - Part 3

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019

(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

Well, another March M.O.D.O.K. Madness submission!  This one was sort of meant to resemble a block print/screen print, or perhaps a spray paint template for graffiti-style posters.

This one is a bit of a letdown from a direct ripoff of Charles Schulz like the last post, but what'cha gonna do?  :-D

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STEP ONE:  I didn't bother to do any pencils, just went straight into drawing in Clip Studio Paint EX using one of the ink brushes.  I used the Symmetry Ruler, so all ink lines were mirrored on both sides.

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STEP TWO:  I exported the image to PhotoShop and resized the drawing.  At first, I was intending to just do it as the strong black-and-white image, but thought I'd colorize it with a flat orange/brown color scheme with a Lighten Layer. 

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint -- with an assist from Photoshop.

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March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 - Part 2

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019

(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

Hey, it's time for another submission to the March M.O.D.O.K. Madness Blog!  In this case, I had the idea of using the very first Peanuts comic strip (formerly "Li’l Folks") with M.O.D.O.K., Arnim Zola, and Doughboy replacing Charlie Brown, Shermy and Patty.  It was completely unbidden, and not one of the projects for March M.O.D.O.K. Madness I had planned; but, once in my head, it would not go away until I got it done.  So, here it is!

Here's the first "Peanuts" cartoon, so you can compare and contrast...

I did have do some thinking as to who was going to replace whom in my version.  Was it going to be Arnim Zola skipping merrily down the street, and M.O.D.O.K. complaining about how much he hates Zola, with an A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) sitting beside him?  But, since it was March M.O.D.O.K. Madness and NOT August Arnim Agitation, I figured it would be M.O.D.O.K. for Charlie Brown.  But, who should sit beside Arnim Zola?  Not a member of A.I.M, or even Hydra...  That's when I remembered Doughboy from the issue of Captain America I had--Zola's own creation as the Bio-Fanatic.  He would fit perfecting in Patty's place.

So, with the characters chosen, it was just a matter of plugging them in and using Charles Schulz's style.  Done and DONE!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the quickly scribbled digital pencils, done in Clip Studio Paint EX on a pencil layer which I color blue, being a creature of the olden days when Non-Photo Blue was a thing used to setup for printing.  Even though it is easy to hide any color chosen, I still like the look of blue line artwork.  The aesthetic appeals to me.

And, yeah, I wanted to include the obvious joke of turning "Friends" into "Fiends" by crossing out the "r" in "Friends".  Let it never be said I'm nothing if not obvious!

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STEP TWO:  Here are the digital inks, also done in Clip Studio Paint EX.

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STEP THREE:  I colored the four-panels in Clip Studio Paint, then imported it into Photoshop so I could add a Filter for Color Halftone (set to 35% opacity); I also dropped the opacity of the original drawing to 70%, as well.  There was also a vintage paper texture I added over top, set on a Multiply Layer and lowered the opacity to 75%.

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SIDE NOTE:  I really like the vintage-paper look, which gives it a newsprint feel.  I **ALMOST** used this as the finished pic, but I had already gone through and colored everything, adding the vintage paper texture last.  So, here are both examples to look at and compare, just for fun.

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint -- with an assist from Photoshop.

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March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 - Part 1

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019

(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

Oh, hi, I didn't see you there!  It's March already, so that can only mean one thing: It's time again for submissions about everyone's favorite Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing: March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2019 has begun!

In this case, it's M.O.D.O.K. showing the same dismay I am that it's March already.  Yikes!  Where does the time go?  It must have been all that snow I have been shoveling the past few weeks here in the Midwest, but I was caught up a little short for the first day of March.

Anyways, with that in mind, here's my first submission to the March M.O.D.O.K. Madness Blog, with plenty more to follow!  It was done up so quickly that I didn't even bother with pencils and other niceties.

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Done digitally with Clip Studio Paint EX.

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