Red Devil

I did this illustration a few months ago but have been wanting to blog about the process of creating it. It started as a little imp of an idea and grew.

I used a similar process to the one I used for the shrunken head. Started with a sketch but this time only drew half the face. I drew a fairly detailed sketch so I knew were to put the lines and had an idea of the shading.

Once I had the sketch where I liked it I scanned it in and imported it to Adobe Illustrator. I scaled it to the size I wanted to work with, reduced the transparency to 50% and locked the layer.

I then created a new layer and started to create my vector outlines. I start by roughing them in and then going back and refining them to follow the sketch. In some places I didn't like the way the lines look once added so I alter them to be more visually appealing. Once I had half the outline done I filled it in with a nice red to get an idea of how the shape looked.

I created another new layer that I added the facial features to. I refined them also to make sure they looked like I wanted them to.

I added the horn and some subtle shading to a new layer.

I added more details to give the image the look I wanted. I then duplicated the left side and flipped it.

Combining the two halves gave me the whole face. I went in and tweaked it some more. Adding extra shading and details to make it look better. One thing I had noticed when I first combined the halves was he looked cross-eyed. I redid the eyes and liked the way he looked finally.

I added some colors and shading to the background and used one of the textures from Crumble. Crackle. Burn. to create the final look. I also used the image as one of my bottle labels for Monster Brew.

Monster Brew

After creating Frankenstein, the shrunken head and the devil image for MonsterMonday, I was wondering what they could be used for. I showed the shrunken head image to a friend and the made a comment about “creative juices.” That got me thinking about different names for it and I came up with Voodoo Juice. “Hmm ,” I thought, “that would make a cool beverage label sitting on a shelf in a store.” I played around with it and came up with the Voodoo Juice label and then the light went on. Why not do Monster Brew’s labels and see what they look like? So I took the three I had done and added a pirate themed one and “BAM!”



After creating the labels I wanted to see what they would look like on bottles. I found an image of a suitable bottle and went into Photoshop and placed the labels on the bottles. I then clipped the bottles out and placed them all together.I had the beverage bottles but they needed a neck label to show the company. After tossing around some ideas I came up with Monster Brew. Each of the labels had the silhouette of a skull and cross bones behind it so I had to use that as the logo. I played around in Illustrator and created the logo.



I turned again to Photoshop and added the labels to the necks to produce the finished look.



I love it when one idea feeds another. As you can see the creative process is sometimes WHAM! and you have it other times it is slow and takes time. In this case each idea created the next and I have a final creation that I like. There are two more brews I want to add to finalize the six pack, so watch for them.