Thursday, April 25, 2013

773 - "JKE-RBN7 (#4D2)"


I don't often make changes to art pieces I have published here on JSVB, although many times I have been tempted.  In this case, I had the very strong idea just as I was getting out of bed this morning that I should alter yesterday's entry just a little.  I've learned to trust that intuition.

As well, I can take the opportunity to explain some of the design choices I made.  The first thing I did was to change the droid's name from JK-RBN7 to JKE-RBN7, which I hope reads better.  The black 'droid is loosely based on C-3PO from Star Wars (1977), as well as on baseball legend Jackie Robinson.  Presumably, JKE-RBN7 was designed and built with the intention to play baseball, something that would likely be well beyond the abilities of a typical protocol droid.  Being made out of metal, I imagine C-3PO could at least take getting hit by pitches to get on base. 

The foundation for this image is one of those old Star Wars collector's cards.  I recall having a few as a child: Tarkin, Leia, and I think maybe the Death Star.  When I ran an Internet search, I found one with C-3PO with a massive, um, golden rod.  It's easy to find if you search for the Topps C-3PO trading card.  In any case, the card frame made a life-like background for my art.  

I had to make several trials before I got the 'droid to look black enough without veering back into sex-toy territory.  Paint C-3PO black, and he starts to look an awful lot like "The Gimp" from Pulp Fiction (1994).   I was trying for something amusing yet respectful.  The Baseball Hall Of Fame provided some great source material for the pose, confirming for me that Jackie Robinson gripped the bat by the knob, the piece at the very end, which increases the whip motion of the bat.  

I "aged" the image in Photoshop in three phases.  One was to restore the look of paper by applying a cardboard texture overlay, the second was to create half-tone colours, and the last was to apply a little blur to reduce the sharpness of the print.  As part of the edit process, today I added a couple of the typical markings that Topps used on their cards that I had neglected in the previous iteration.  Fortunately, their font choices were easy to match.  The changes are small, but I hope they improve this image!

To see yesterday's version of JKE-RBN7, even though it looks a lot like today's version, please click here.  



EDIT: I know I spelled "Wookiee" wrong.  But did you know that the real Star Wars cards had all kinds of mistakes?  You can look them up.