This was done for the R3 Illustration jam on Third Rail Design Lab’s R3 Forum, the subject being the X-Men, from Marvel Comics, but as a design challenge: Old-Timey!

Oooooh, this is my kind of jam. I love redesign challenges. And I love cryptohistory and the like. But also, beyond that, this was an opportunity to do something I wanted to try ever since I got caught up in the blogs of Jorge Garcia and Beth Shady. See, Jorge, best knows as Hurley on Lost, is a 100% minimum awesome guy. His personal blog, which he’s run since the show’s inception, almost killed it due to producer pressure regarding spoiler risk management, then carried on to not only be Lostian, but a great snapshot of Hawaii and the idiosyncrasies of living there as a guest, has been an addictive read for me. He has always been personal, random, funny and sincere in his posts and subject matter. He’s also from my home town of Westwood, apropos of nothing, other than it’s amusing to think of us roaming similar haunts, slightly time-shunted. He and his girlfriend Beth have struck me, over time, as incredibly rad people. She is a talented writer and creative person the likes of which remind me of my wife and some of our friends here in the Bay Area, and we have joked about how Jorge and Beth have been added to our virtual friend group, which sounds creepier than it is. ANYWAY, as the final season of Lost was wrapping up, I was inspired to send Jorge and Beth some art. He frequents the cons and seems to appreciate fan art and other random stuff people send him, and so I thought what the hell, they struck me in a personal way, so I’ll draw something for them.

I was inspired by this jam selection to do an old-timey X-Men portrait, with Jorge as Colossus and Beth as Ariel/Sprite/Kitty Pryde. My original concept included their beloved pup, who unfortunately passed right as I was drawing this. LITERALLY. So after consulting my wifebot(tm), I decided not to include him out of respect for their grieving process. My goal here was to portray something of each of them while maintaining a close tether to the concept of the X-Men characters involved, all wrapped up in a neo-victorian Carnivale style. I wanted to portray Jorge’s mass and presence in an interesting way, and the lightness and quirkiness of Beth’s personality as well (read her blog for more of that, she’s really something). I think it came outpretty well, and it’s another addition to my slowly growing collection of cryptohistorical redesigns.

I’m not one to be fannish over celebrities. I grew up, as mentioned, in Westwood, among child actors and famous folks, and they’re just regular folk, hyper-familiar. But in my adult life, I enjoy being enthused at my favorite actors and their work, and pay my respects when I see someone that does stuff I dig. So, anyhow, I sent the original art off to them, and we’ll see if they like it. I hope they do!

Anyway, please enjoy!

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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:

The challenge with Colossus as a character is the expression of hair on a ‘living metal’ form. In the comics, it’s usually cheated away with him having black hair and thus abstracted. Occasionally you see other metallic humanoids in comics, with regular hair, and they tend to look as expected: metal with human hair, like something out of a late 80s music video. Anyway, I tried to express this design’s facial hair and, well, hair-hair, without it looking too creepy.

I’m no caricaturist. I tried to capture the essence of Jorge’s vibe without trying to draw Jorge per se, and in fusing that with the massive bodybuilder/strongman imagery for the carnivale version of Colossus, I wanted to show bulk and muscle without tone, like classic big-build strongmen of old.

Here’s Beth as ‘Sprite’ in the original inks. I had some tweaks to do with her face ink-wise, and decided to broaden her smile in final rendering.

Here’s Jorge completed, with some X-Men referencing but in general, pushing more towards the carnivale thing than the comic reference, as I tend to do on these redesigns.

Beth, now with phasing happening.

The skeletal birds holding the banner up, and the mysterious vaudevillian soke on the perimeter are clearly references to the final beats of the show, but I otherwise tried to keep the Lost thing out of the way, as this was about Jorge and Beth, not his famous role (or hers, either, being an Ajira passenger, ha)

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL 2011 Series, No. 14: Black Death [Cryptohistorical]
2. TRDL Tribute: Dr. Strange [TRDL Redesign]
3. TRDL Tribute – Wonder Woman 2010 [TRDL Redesign]