March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2026 #2

March M.O.D.O.K. Madness 2026
(Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing)

It's the next submission featuring that Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing:
MARCH M.O.D.O.K. MADNESS!

This time doing a parody of the classic "Akira" poster by Otomo, with M.O.D.O.K. doing the classic walk toward his Kirby-Powered Mecho-Chair.  This is one of those images I've had in my mind for quite some time, but it feels so familiar.  I tried to do a check on The Googles and such to make sure this hasn't been done before and didn't see an example.  Perhaps it has been on my mind for so long that I gave myself deja vu.

As for the Kanji for M.O.D.O.K., as I neither read or write Japanese (heck, many argue I barely read and write in my native tongue, English), I will have to put my blind faith in the Internet that the English to Kanji translator I used is correct. What could possibly go wrong?  Anyhoo, I traced over the Kanji to go over the M.O.D.O.K. ala the "Akira" poster, just to be as accurate as possible and to minimize the odds of my accidentally writing some unintentional.

Visit the March M.O.D.O.K. Madness Blog early and often to see some of the other artists who also enjoy the exploits of everyone's favorite Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing and tell 'em John sent ya!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the very quickly scribbled digital pencils done on a 2,000px x 3,000px canvas.

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STEP TWO:  And here are digital inks.  I didn't care for the penciled steps into the Mechano-Chair as the 1-point perspective made it look a little on the wonky side, so Ichanged it in the Inks to make them a bit more rounded and curved to follow the Mechano-Chair's form.

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STEP THREE:  And here are the added colors, done on several layers under the Digital Inks.  I debated exporting the Inks Layer as a .png and doing the colors in Rebelle, as it does a much better job with some of the paintings brushes and tools, but decided to just do it all in Clip Studio Paint.  I love Clip Studio Paint's Ink brushes, and Rebelle's color and digital paints.  If only they could be combined into some Frankenstein program!

Good enough to call DONE and go on the start the next one!

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint.

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Akira / Charles M. Schulz Mash-Up

Akira / Charles M. Schulz Mash-Up

Linus/Tetsuo Transformation

I guess I'm still in a Charles M. Schulz state of mind.  And, with it being the 30th Anniversary of "Akira" (an anime I sought out shortly after it was released on VHS for rental back in the day--as well as the manga when it was being released through Epic Comics, and eventually the giant, phone books of the series), I thought it would be amusing to mash 'em up.

In this case, it is Linus as Tetsuo in the beginning of his transformation.  Originally, I thought about doing it as Charlie Brown saying "Good Grief!"  But, then I thought it would be better to have Linus, and he could use his blanket as the "cape" and his hair would vaguely resemble Tetsuo's (well, that may have been a little optimistic).  It seemed to work better, in my humble opinion.  I may still do something right-and-proper for Akira, as it is a series for which I have a great fondness.

Also, completely unrelated, this is something weird for me: I had my own brush with the Mandela Effect this evening.  For the longest time, I thought "Charles M. Schulz" spelled his last name "Schultz"--right up 'til a few hours ago.  In fact, my fingers still automatically type it out that way.  Now, I could just say it's a case of me not paying careful attention as a kid, assuming it is spelled in the more classic manner, and having my stupid brain just insert the "t" that I always assumed was there; nope, rather than admitting I'm a total, complete dumb@$$, instead I'll postulate an alternate-universe/quantum something-something/time-travel mix-up.  So, there!

That said, I went through this morning and updated my obvious, previous posts and fixed the spelling to "Schulz"--well, aside from a couple drawings which have "With apologies to Charles M. Schultz" on them, where I'm afraid my shame will still be on display as I'm too lazy to fix it at the moment.  Good grief!

For fun (your definition of "fun" may vary), below, I actually decided to include the steps for making the picture.  It shouldn't be quite as cumbersome as the trying to do the last post of the O.M.A.C. / Charles M. Schulz Mash-Up.  So, for those of you interested, here ya go!  For those of you not interested...  Um, well, it's still there.

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STEP ONE:  Here are the digital pencils, which I did on a 1,500px x 2,100px canvas at 300dpi.  

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STEP TWO:  Here are the digital inks.  I used a slightly modified G-Brush from Clip Studio Paint to ink the drawing, typed in the text with a Comix Heavy font, and created the dialog balloon.

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STEP THREE:  I colorized the drawing in Photoshop on a Multiply layer.

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STEP FOUR:  Because I liked the distressed effects in the previous post, I thought I'd do it again.  In this case, the color-Mulitply layer was duplicated on top of the original one, with a 4pt Color Pixelation filter applied to it; it was changed to a Lighten layer and opacity was dropped to 50%.  Then, on top, I had a scan of a cracked, yellowed paper which I placed on top, changed to a Darken Layer, adjusted the Levels to bring out some of the texture, and dropped the opacity to 40%.  

To post it, the resolution was dropped to 1,000px x 1,400px at 200dpi, and called it "Good 'nuff!"

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This was done with Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop.

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