AZTECHKA

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Happy New Year everyone! It's amazing to think that this site was started just over a year ago. And to celebrate, I'm going to be adding a new feature or two to this site very soon. (Hint: the first feature will involve a little treat with this latest piece. )

Behind the Scenes: Johnny Bravo: Superhero!

BEHIND THE SCENES is where we take a look at the early steps taken to create the finished artwork featured on PixelReason. I will always try to include some insights as to why I made certain creative decisions during the process leading to completion and also share some of the techniques I used to create the piece featured. 

 

Welcome  back to another installment of Behind the Scenes! This time we show you the making of Johnny Bravo: Superhero! Hope you enjoy!

Johnny Bravo: Hero

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Batman? Spiderman? Cyclops? Daredevil? Superman? Joker? Ha! The ladies have spoken! They've got nothing on Johnny Bravo! 

PixelReason reader, JohnnyBravo, requested an image of Johnny Bravo being a superhero for his avatar. Above is the large un-cropped version. The cropped 1:1 ratio images that can be used for an avatar are provided below. Enjoy Johnny Bravo in all his glorious chick-magnet-ness!

Behind the Scenes: Ghostbusters!

BEHIND THE SCENES is where we take a look at the early steps taken to create the finished artwork featured on PixelReason. I will always try to include some insights as to why I made certain creative decisions during the process leading to completion and also share some of the techniques I used to create the piece featured.

Materials/Process : 
This piece was originally created with a traditional drawing pencil (hb grade lead) on a 9x12 sheet of sketch paper. Then I used a Pilot Precise v7 (fine tip) Rolling Ball pen to ink the Ghostbusters logo (you'll notice the grey lines are all still pencil. Only the logo was inked). This was to help the logo stand out if I needed additional ways to make it "pop" later on.

Layout:
Since this request was going to be used for a cellphone wall paper (portrait wallpaper) and a laptop wallpaper (laptop wallpaper), it had to be laid out to look good on both types of layouts. A cellphone has a very small screen so keeping it simple and "readable" is always the first rule. So the Ghostbusters logo was clearly going to be the main focus for that wallpaper. So for the laptop wallpaper version, I simply extended the left side and added more to the "story." I chose to extend the left side because most people view images from left to right. Meaning that whatever is on the right tends to be what the viewer's eyes ultimately settle on. So the logo was positioned to be what gives the piece its weight.

Droid does Graffiti : Concrete Variant

This piece got a huge amount of positive feedback from you guys, so here's a new version of "Droid does Graffiti" with a concrete background treatment. This version is available in the same requested sizes as the original (960x800). It's compatible with the Samsung Galaxy S cellphones. If you would like other sizes to fit your laptops, desktops, or cellphone wallpapers, let me know and it will be done!

*Update: By request: new size has been added for a tablet wallpaper!

Behind the Scenes: Green Lantern brings the Android Invasion!

BEHIND THE SCENES is where we take a look at the early steps taken to create the finished artwork featured on PixelReason. I will always try to include some insights as to why I made certain creative decisions during the process leading to completion and also share some of the techniques I used to create the piece featured. 

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Tools: Once again, I used my basic set of "on the go" tools. 9x12 sketch paper with a Pilot Precise v7 (fine tip) Rolling Ball pen (aka my high school pen) and a black sharpie. For PixelReason, I'm trying to keep things relatively fast and simple (...sort of simple).

Point of interest: In comic books, you'll usually create stars by inking an area solid black, then spattering opaque white ink/paint onto the black to make the stars. But I didn't want to do that because I had two things in mind that this unconventional approach would make it easier for me accomplish:
1.) To blend in some great blue gradients into the space sky to give it more depth (instead of just a flat black).
and more importantly:
2.) To use the lines that were used to draw the flying "droids" as green glowing outlines when I colored the piece. If you were to fill in the sky with black, you would lose the "outlines" and I would have nothing to make solid glowing outer lines around the droids. Less work? Yes please and thank you.