This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being the characters from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

I loved He-Man as a kid. As I got into later elementary school years, i was very aware of how terrible that cartoon was and how much the toys influenced my appreciation for the show. In fact, a friend in Junior High I recall learned to draw muscles by looking at his roided-out figures. I for one certainly noted a thing or two about the female form from my Sorceress and She-Ra figures, indeed. I also got in big trouble for melting a Skeletor’s head with a lighter. While playing hooky.

Anyway, this is actually a finished version fo an aborted commission piece. I had gone another direction for that client and this one, partially completed, has sat in my construction folder for years now. I pulled it out late last night, digitally drew the lower half and a lof of the details, modified the face considerably and redid the hands and bust (the original design was an erotic commission), then rendered her and built the Nose Art around it for a TRDL Pin-Up. I really enjoy the colors of this character design. Very nostalgic work!

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:

This is the original character model I used as color reference. Ah, the good old days.

Here’s a close up of the face before and after my revisions…
You can also probably note the original was less clothed.

Oh, a few notes on the Nose Art wrapper here. The ‘Rampart Squadron’, and ‘nothing gets past these walls’ are references … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: Zsatannei
2. TRDL Tribute: Elasti-Girl [Doom Patrol]
3. TRDL Tribute – Xartherian Org Battle Carapace

hey TRDL/R3 army!
You may only know me as an artist, but I’m also a bike-rider, and here’s some exciting news…

as many of you remember, ironlung PARTICIPATED in a charity fundraiser 585-mile bike ride called the AIDS lifeCycle in the summer of ’08. it’s an amazing event and over the last several years, it’s raised over $11M/year for AIDS and HIV research and treatment.

well, this year, WR and IL are doing it together, as a team, and we’re both doing it on fixed-gears. one speed and no coasting from san francisco to los angeles. this will be a brutal effort, one which could just as easily reward us with a major sense of accomplishment as with blown out knee tendons. but we are committed, and when we are committed, things happen.

our notification to you is two-fold, of course. one part of it is pride in our upcoming challenge. we’re both really looking forward to putting ourselves into this feat and as always, we love sharing that stuff with you, the faithful TRDL/R3 army. but it is a fundraiser, and we’re hoping to rally your help, even if that just means forwarding our information on to others. we know that asking for money is difficult and uncomfortable, but there’s a lot of talented people here who may be able to auction off art or services or the like.

if you or anyone you know is interested in participating in such a way, they can go to PAYPAL and send their donation to wrongrobot(at)thirdraildesignlab(dot)com. we’ll be splitting everything between the two of us, since we each have a minimum of $3000 to raise.

for our own part, we’re hosting a fundraiser party at a great little bar here in SF, which will feature trivia games (complete with kickass prizes … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. TRDL Special Project: Team Lope AIDS Fundraiser 2010
2. TRDL Tribute- Team Lope Bike Girl: Red
3. TRDL Tribute: Team Lope Bike Grrl Seen: Star

As you probably know from reading previous posts, I don’t think the iPad is a JesusProduct, but I see certain niches that look promising, and several that are just toy fun. Anyway, the area I’m most interested in, as a creator, is the standards war for comicreaders on the iPad. Right now, there are three basic methods: Basic iPad OS ie pictures, third party comicreader apps, often with subscription/store models, and web-based readers. I provide PDF/CBR and a web-based reader for Finit-e, my comic. I’m interested to see how the iPad users who read comics will be most comfortable: which interface works best? As a creator, i can have my work made available to third-party reader apps, at some cost. I can optimize a version of my web-reader on the http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com site to work well with the aspect ratio of the iPad… or i can look at ways to expand the functionality of reading on the device. From this perspective, I’m very interested in test-driving some of the third-party apps out there and see what true value-adds are in place. With conventional computer-based readers, I was never much of a fan. The interface of the reader was obtrusive. And most web-readers try gimmicks like simple animations and breaking page format. I generally just prefer looking at a PDF.

With Finit-e’s reader, I brought in certain functionality beyond looking at the PDF or a print copy: I have a thumbnail of the page, zooming to a full screen page, zooming to a high-rez version you can scroll. I also have keyed icons for extra content, like the character gallery and the annotations. But I specifically set it up to be unobtrusive. So, I want to see what the iPad gets us.

I have many friends who read much, or all, of … Read on for more awesome…

Related posts:

1. Finit-e Survey!
2. Finit-e Scene 04 is Live
3. Finit-e Chapter 4 is Almost Here

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