I was a vicious gamer when a was a kid. I used to play for hours (if not days) until finish a entire game. And besides the 8-bit Nintendo, back in the early 90's I love to play PC games too, old DOS games like Commander Keen, one of my favorites PC games of all time.
I already have this game in mind on my "to do list" over my 8-bit illustration series, in fact last years was the 25th anniversary of the game saga but I was doing some other stuff then, so when I was asked a month ago to be part of a collective art exhibit about science fiction that back in mind. Commander Keen had everything with Sci-Fi: A 8 yearl old genius kid that creates a spaceship, alienforms, ray guns, so that's it, this will be the the piece I will participate with. And well, I need some inspiration so I began to play again.
THE SKETCH
Once I spent like more than a half day playing and switching between all the games in the saga of Commander Keen, I got it more clear, taking a bit of each one, I sketch the main character with his classic ray gun and the Bean-with-bacon spaceship, and a lot of his most knowns foes like the poison worm and the dope fish!. With Keen on the center, the composition will flow around him like one of those classic 80's game posters.
SCAN & OUTLINES
Once I had my sketch well defined, I scanned and began to drop some lines over the main character, just simple vector strokes with no more science that using a 2 button mouse and drawing them with Adobe Illustrator's Pen Tool with mouse click.
FLAT COLOR
After getting all the lines I need, I put some flat color shapes under this outlines layer. again everything with the pentool.
Lights and Shadows
For getting some volumen, I add lights and shadows, same process like drawing the flat shapes. Doing same thing to the background, working with a martian-like red tones, is just matter of building a good color palette and is done.
Finally I added a lot of hidden details, most of them are part of my signature in every illustration I make and the work is done.
Here's the printed and framed illustration, size 60cm x 40cm, Glicee print over cotton acid-free paper, the same night of the art exhibit opening at the gallery.
