Done. After just three months.

To think that I never wanted to do fan art...

I wanted to practice skeleton drawing and was searching for a way to do that in a non-boring, publishable way. A friend of mine suggested to illustrate a poem by Goethe, which had lots of dancing skeletons, but although I do like the poet very much, I immediately thought of a scene from the now-antique computer game "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge". I started to sketch way back in August. Had I known how much effort this one demanded, I might not have finished this at all.

However, creating this was interesting, and I probably learnt quite much:

I can paint either for web or for print. Not both at a time. This piece has a lot of nice textures, but one doesn't see them in web-friendly resolutions. Hopefully, it all comes back in print.

This project was composed of 7 individual drawings on my sketchpad. Of course, a lot of detail was lost in the overpaint process, and that was a pity (I will post the original, detailed pencil skeleton sketches in my "scraps" section soon - for you to experience how much was lost exactly).
I must find a way to retain more of my original drawings in the finished piece. Black or colored outlines, for example. Ah, to hell with realism, that's probably not for me anyway.

Fan art from scratch is a challenge of its own. How does one retain the original "feel" while adding own elements of style, and in this case also: detail and perspective (the original was a two-minute scene in a 1991 computer game, with VERY low resolution). I do like Guybrush Threepwood's face, as it came out in my effort.

Painter X is not the tool for me. I used a 30-day trial version for this, yet not very effectively. The remaining 16 days of evaluation won't be put to use, I can tell you. What I need from Painter can be made in my "Essentials" version just as well.


Hope you like it!