This is a look at the creative process behind the recent collaboration between Killer Napkins and Myself. There are lots of pieces missing, mostly because we sent the art back and forth so much. We probably traded it 10 times in the first day. Anyway, here’s how we pooped out our bastard child:

Phase 1 – Abstract Shapes to Sketch

To start it out, Napkins sent me 5 files composed of abstract shapes. I picked the one that I liked best and started drawing what I saw in the shapes.

This was the shape I picked:

This was after it got passed back and forth about 3 times. I saw a face and hat in it, apparently I also saw boobs in it:

Another time. Because Jason started it, mostly I did the rough sketching and he tightened everything up. It’s just how the cycle went:

A few more:

At this point, Napkins tightened up the ribs sketch, and we started having to deal with the fact that this guy needed to fit on a shirt:

Here I sketched in the skull. It’s a bit of a surrealist mechanism, coming out of the empty ribcage. It also serves to elongate the character and fill out the shirt shape better:

This is the sketch after Napkins cleaned it all up and added some shockers, and our first proposed background element:

Then he converted it to an outline and sent it back to me:

Phase 2 – Coloring.

I added some color and shading in my normal manner, although I was kind of excited at the chance to ape a Napkins color scheme. It was all done with the pencil tool in photoshop.

Then I overlayed a tattoo texture using Gomedias Ornate texture pack, and set the layer to multiply. Finally I added some splatter effect, and a couple of flourishes to kind of bring my style into it:

At this point we sent it back and forth several times trying to figure out a background. Eventually I proposed this:

Which Napkins mulled over and returned to me as this:

I inked and colored the sketch he sent me, and after spending a while trying to tweak it, we decided on what we liked the best. Here’s the end result:

So, that’s pretty much it, unless Napkins has anything to contribute. It was lots of fun to work on, I’d recommend everyone work with Malone once or twice. Let us know what you think!