This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being a Design Challenge this time around: Create your own ‘Crime Syndicate version of a DC Hero.’ For those not familiar, the Crime Syndicate was an Earth-2(?) version of the JLA, as villains. The jam suggestion gave an opportunity to play around with the design of an established character, give it that villainous touch, but try and make it identifiable.

As I have been angling to do as many of these jam pieces as TRDL Pinups as possible, I gravitated to Zatanna. In my redesign, instead of being a stage magician themed character, my Zsatannei was a baroque carnivale magician who made a deal with a sub-dimensional horror, giving her access to unspeakable evil in the form of a dimensional portal in her hat. The concept was that she isn’t ready to just unleash this Lovecraftian horror upon the world, but rather keeps it in check through force of will, in order to make use of the power to fuel her insidious methods. I wanted to go old school with the costume, taking inspiration from a number of vaudeville vintage photos as well as the leggings and shoulder/arm sashes from a ‘naughty gypsy’ adult costume. Sadly, I didn’t see this costume live on anyone I knew. Anyway, I used the top hat as the design element that reinforces the Zatanna theme, which I hope is a successful tether to the original character. Easter egg: MOOD Parfume… that’s a nod to Zatanna’s say-it-backwards spellcasting… also alluded to in the Mood banner logotype.

Please enjoy! Hell yes!

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Process Notes:

Pencils and Inks…

The original version was legs together tucked in and knees high to the chest, but i feared this might be a little demure for a spry demon-hat-having bitch, so I drew a second set and compiled them, with more of a classy pin-up leg cross.

I’ve shown each below with the alternate ghosted…

I cannot tell you how much I rely on photoshop on these pieces, fitting components together and trying things out, cleaning up ink errors and the like. I still have the habit of drawing corrections in ink on the page as I note problems during inks, even extra limbs and faces, etc. but as I have more opportunities to work with the Cintiq I suspect I’ll do less of that, as inking on that guy is much more natural than the Intuos for me personally. Still, to date I’ve only Cintiq’d two commissions and some TRDL character work. These TRDL pin ups for the jams have been Intuos as before…

Legs together

Legs crossed

Man this one was fun.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Sorceress (He-Man)
2. TRDL Tribute – Xartherian Org Battle Carapace
3. TRDL Tribute: Black Orchid