Ok, this picture took forever and has some minor weird edits around the edges so roll with me here.
I made this image to be a playmat for my partner. His two favorite franchises are Army of Darkness and Transmetropoliton. So I decided to do a crossover homage peice for him for Yule. (Shh, don't tell. ;) It's fine, he doesn't have Inkblot.)
But to some degree this picture is also my love letter to the comic, and to comic art in general. Transmetropoliton has a great story, but the art is amazing and incredibly detailed. Every background and scene is rich, with graffiti and trash and animals and scuffs and battle damage and lighting. The angles are pristine and tell us a lot about the setting. The characters have incredible visual metaphors - the way the characters morph slowly into being more like the main character, whether out of admiration or survival, while retaining their own personas. The way each small story is just full of this incredible and beautiful fleshed out world.
I worked really REALLY hard on this bit. I can only hope I've done it justice, and honestly? I know I haven't. I will never be a DC professional comic book artist. But I think I did well. And I really do like how it came out.
In the end I had to shift the image around a little because I made it to be printed on a physical object and the final peice risked important bits being cut off. So the edges are weirdly blurry in this version. But I figured I'd just leave it like that.
I will say this. I never, ever, in my entire life, wanna hand draw another building with dozens to hundreds of windows ever again. That killed me.
I hope if you've read through this you go check out either of the original works. Army of Darkness is campy almost comedic time travel horror and Transmetropoliton is gritty anti-government dystopian cyberpunk future, with journalism and drugs. They're both worth your time.
And I hope you enjoy the peice.