[PROCESS] ARENA - PART 2

Hungry?

Okayyy Part 2 of Arena process begins!

Hope everyone enjoyed Mike Huddleston’s process pt.1 as much as I did.

Annnd to second Mikes words, Andy absolutely did an amazing job with this story. He really brought this to life and took it beyond our concepts.

So here we go….

The Fighting Ring

If you haven’t already read the ARENA story, this might be a bit of a spoiler so I would go back and read because the pit somewhat takes a life of it’s own.

Mike mentioned it yesterday in his post that originally it was a ring but ended as a recessed pit with big teeth in the centre of it.

So the idea for this pit made of teeth was basically all of us bouncing ideas off of one another. Sometimes the best ideas come from just a basic dialogue between people and that’s exactly how we came from fighting ring to hungry hungry pit with teeth. It kinda went like this:

Hey guys, this just came to mind for the Arena story. What if the arena was some sort of fighting cage and the cage was made of weapons and as they fought they would pull these weapons off slowly breaking apart the cage which eventually in the end, would just be decimated to create a unique shape. The script called for a Bloodsport type of ring and what stuck to me in that movie was how iconic that curved ring looked in the end of the movie after 100’s of brutal fights. Whatchu think?

So after this proposal, ideas started to come from all sides and what I thought was a great idea at the moment wasn’t as great as what we ended up with, after 10 minutes of back and forth of (what if we did this or what if it was that), a ring of weapons turned into a ring of teeth that belonged to a creature hidden underneath which would eat the loser champion for dinner.

Talking out ideas is one of my favorite things to do and it leads to so much awesomeness. I mean, what’s crazy is it kinda still maintains that idea of a bloodsport type of ring changing shape in the end but it instead of a shape it’s a creature.

The Peacock Champion

So yeah, it’s always good to keep a bank of ideas and images you’ve created cuz they can always be used for something down the line or at least something to build upon. In this instance, I was having issues coming up with something so I went into my library of sketches and found a cool sketch I did of a dude that had weapons stuck in his back, flared out like a peacocks feathers. It fit so well with the story of this big menacing gladiator, I decided to use it. I just refined the drawing a little to look more like a combo between a WWE character and a Gladiator. Check out the OG’s below and what I ended up with. Also, artist tip of the day: always save your ideas, all of them!

The King

So this was just an exercise of fun. A lot mixing images and juxtaposing. Sometimes I’ll do a cut-out process where I’ll take certain images and paste them on top of each other to create different silhouettes. Here’s a look at what I came up with for the cut and paste. It was a mix of a troll doll, Ultimate warrior and Yukon Cornelius. The Trolls hair would form the sihouette of the crystal crown, the beard came from Yukon Cornelius, and the inspiration for the face paint came from the Ultimate warrior.

Hope eveyone enjoyed the process. On to the next one.

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