New Underwear

In this Rotten School book #4, "Lose Team Lose," (probably the best and most funny in my opinion) Bernie Bridges has two wars going on - one fighting the girl of his nightmares hunting him down, and the other a series of huge, monstrous opposing football teams. To him, they're just as bad. But I loved depicting this character with practically no shoulders in huge pads, and it brought his Hershey's Kiss-shaped body into a neat, opposing triangular shape.

(Here's a secret - I'm not very organized, no really, not at all) But I make myself get that way or things get really messy. With every book, project, etc. I break out a binder and sleeves, shown here, and just keep every tearing, every shred, and piece that makes it into the scanner, 'cause you just might need it later. Here you can see the pieces that went into this page alone:

The first issue here was the player behind Bernie, although menacing, he looked too old. Note several tries at it above.

A smaller chin helped, and I went overboard a little by giving him an almost babyish look and added big, puffy cheeks. The only thing not really babyish here is the tough, lower lip. You teach yourself things at the strangest times...

Although I loved the big guy's build, I was willing to sacrifice most of his presence by making him bleed off the page with his huge shoulder pads. So my suggested layout was below. But in the end, we went with keeping his whole silhouette within the crop. Still worked.

One of my all-time favorite tools in Painter is the Digital Paintbrush Splatter Water tool! It's rare you get a chance to really pour it out there, but with this guy, the great thing about it being in B&W was that while it gave the impression that he was covered in splashes of mud and grime, it also gave the creepy impression that it could also be blood from last week's game.