Viejo Guerrero 6.5: Bonus - The Making of the Zuke Graphic ⋆ AZPX

Inspiration 1. Rich really liked his welcome to the team image. He dug the colors and the skulls on the right side. I created an AZPX logo paintbrush in Photoshop and repeatedly painted black and white skulls over each other with different sized brushes.

Original Zuke concept/drawing. This is what I had to work with.

My first attempt after talking to Zuke on the phone.

Inspiration 2. Rich sent me this image after I sent him that last train wreck. This gave me a clear vision of what he was talking about. At this point, I had to hunker down and draw this thing from scratch and incorporate the other ideas of the graphic in my own style.

Fire, claw detail. How come the graphic looks so clean compared to this? I sat down with a printout of only the cross and circle for reference to start drawing my graphic. I drew it on top of the printout with pencil, then sharpie. I then scanned into Photoshop and did massive cleanup on each section.

Zuke name draft. I redrew several times before being satisfied with this.

Wing detail. I only really drew one wing. There was no way with my childlike drawing skills that I would duplicate a mirrored image of a bird’s wing, so I left one side blank for some computer madness later.

First attempt at the drawn graphic. Zuke liked it but I forgot birds have tails. Notice the right side wing is not even with the left side wing and the whole head is kinda crooked. This issue plagued me to the end until I just started from scratch AGAIN and redrew the head and deconstructed/constructed back the right side wing to even it off when applied to the deck.

Final tail draft. It took only three tries redrawing from scratch to get it right before the Zuke was happy with it.

The Phoenix was not rising up enough for Zuke but I was running out of room. Making it work in this configuration would mean drastically reducing the scale of the entire bird which would be detrimental to the whole graphic. Rich told me to go look at the image in inspiration 2 and get back to work.

Reworked the bottom layout but Rich wanted more detail in ‘de tail’. Note how screwed up the right side wing and the head are here. Issue not fixed yet.

Final tail configuration. Almost done, just need to balance out the head and right wing.

The final graphic, wing and head fixed, prepped and ready to go into production.

Top art draft 1. I wanted the top graphic to look all sharpied out and quickly drawn. Do you think I can draw my own skull from scratch? Heck no! I printed out a few line drawings of it and just traced it with the sharpie and left the remaining lines and ran with it. Looks like shit and that’s how I wanted it.

Top art draft 2. Drawn on a piece of scratch paper in pieces because I can’t do anything right the first time.

Inspiration #1. Rich really liked his welcome to the team image. He dug the colors and the skulls on the right side. I created an AZPX logo paintbrush in Photoshop and repeatedly painted black and white skulls over each other with different sized brushes.
Original Zuke concept/drawing. This is what I had to work with.
My first attempt after talking to Zuke on the phone.
Inspiration #2. Rich sent me this image after I sent him that last train wreck. This gave me a clear vision of what he was talking about. At this point, I had to hunker down and draw this thing from scratch and incorporate the other ideas of the graphic in my own style.
Fire, claw detail. How come the graphic looks so clean compared to this? I sat down with a printout of only the cross and circle for reference to start drawing my graphic. I drew it on top of the printout with pencil, then sharpie. I then scanned into Photoshop and did massive cleanup on each section.
Zuke name draft. I redrew several times before being satisfied with this.
Wing detail. I only really drew one wing. Thee was no way with my childlike drawing skills that I would duplicate a mirrored image of a bird’s wing, so I left one side blank for some computer madness later.
First attempt at the drawn graphic. Zuke liked it but I forgot birds have tails. Notice the right side wing is not even with the left side wing and the whole head is kinda crooked. This issue plagued me to the end until I just started from scratch AGAIN and redrew the head and deconstructed/constructed back the right side wing to even it off when applied to the deck.
Final tail draft. It took only three tries redrawing from scratch to get it right before the Zuke was happy with it.
The Phoenix was not rising up enough for Zuke but I was running out of room. Making it work in this configuration would mean drastically reducing the scale of the entire bird which would be detrimental to the whole graphic. Rich told me to go look at the image in inspiration 2 and get back to work.
Reworked the bottom layout but Rich wanted more detail in ‘de tail’. Note how screwed up the right side wing and the head are here. Issue not fixed yet.
Final tail configuration. Almost done, just need to balance out the head and right wing.
The final graphic, wing and head fixed, prepped and ready to go into production.
Top art draft 1. I wanted the top graphic to look all sharpied out and quickly drawn. Do you think I can draw my own skull from scratch? Heck no! I printed out a few line drawings of it and just traced it with the sharpie and left the remaining lines and ran with it. Looks like shit and that’s how I wanted it.
Top art draft 2. Drawn on a piece of scratch paper in pieces because I can’t do anything right the first time.
Finished Art/Final Product
The Final Product