Music

Just two music nerds talking about music.

Or the day Davo met his match.

The plan was to do some build up for them but this suddenly appeared in front of me so here it is.

I've always imagined Davo as the biggest music nerd of the band, the guy that recites bands and musicians all the time.

Well there's that "So you like X? Name every Y ever" meme of the very intense and gatekeepy kind of guys and don't get me wrong Davo isn't like that, but basically if he were to say Tina "So you like rock huh? Name every band ever" She would just name every band ever right there and then and make him fall in love.

For months I have had a small script for a comic where these two meet (which isn't exactly the hypothetical interaction I just described, so fear not, as you haven't been spoiled), and I just haven't done it because I keep rewriting it every time I want to try. The first version was guilty of the good old "Mucho texto" problem. Then the setting felt weird, then it got combined with another idea I have and so on. But soon It'll be done I promise. And I want to at least have it done before making this one public.

I'll get more deep into the dynamic of these two then.

About making it.

I've been thinking about the creative process a lot lately. Sometimes a picture just appears in one's mind. I was on my couch on New year's eve watching the Evangelion movies just cause and suddenly I thought of an idea for a composition I liked so I sketched it on my phone and after that, now on new year's eve I started working on it.

And the funny thing is that the final result is completely different to what I had in mind at first. The original concept was just two characters practicing unconventional techniques so sitting in an old looking couch. It kind of had the idea of a "David Bowie's The man that sold the world" album cover vibe in my head at first, which is where the concept of featuring a David Bowie's album on the piece came from.

So I sketched the first Idea and realized that the composition really didn't work on practice so I then I thought of something different for Tina's pose, and changing that made Davo's pose feel odd so I changed that and after that the Angle of the piece felt weird so I pretty much started all over again on another angle and that's when It finally worked for me. Ending in a completely different way than the picture that suddenly appeared on my mind and expressing something completely different.

On the first Idea they looked cool but that was kind of it. It was a piece about being cool, which is completely valid, but now it is about an interaction, a moment two characters are having. And I think I like that a bit more. And that's exactly about what I've been thinking about. 95 of the creative process is the work you put into it. It's all the problem solving that it involves. That's the big thing I don't like about the newest generation of digital shortcuts.

And another part of that 95 is what you put of yourself on your stuff, as corny as it sounds. lol

The setting is heavily based on what I remember from the apartment of an uncle of mine but with the color changed to fit better the color composition. I wanted it to feel like a fresh setting, thus the blues. I contrasted them with the shining colors coming from the balcony.

On the floor in front of them there’s some albums I like. I feel though, that these guys would be talking about more obscure stuff, so that’s one of those occasions that the limitations of the artist will unfortunately drag the characters down.

As I talked before in another post I did a couple reinterpretations of some of the albums featured in this piece. Since then I had to add a couple. I added Peter Gabriel’s So. I drew him as a fox because of the Foxtrot suit, easy reference I know. But also I had already drawn him like that in the past in another piece so I got to keep consistent on that. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find the original sketch I did before changing the perspective to use it as reference. If I happen to finally find it I’ll update this post.

Another silly connection is that another OC of mine, Nicole, the ghost hunting Vixen was canonically a huge Peter Gabirel fan on an earlier version of the character. I’ve since then decided that the new version of her is also a big fan but haven’t come up with an organic way for that to come up.

Another Album featured in the background is “The Who’s Who’s Next” . I started making another version of the album with all of them as owls because that may be a lame joke, but it’s a classic. I didn’t get to finish it though as I realized that with the space it would be using on the piece it just wouldn’t be noticeable. If you zoom in on the full res version you may notice it a bit but I don’t count on it.

And finally there’s the Album Tina is holding in her hand.

I made it up.

I also used the real album as a kind of red herring because I have the slight hope that someone seeing this piece may get confused and think it’s a real album they don’t know about. The idea being that these two would be discussing a very obscure album no one knows about. I don’t really expect that to happen but if someone asks about it in the comments when I make this public I will be really happy.

And the final extra picture I worked on for the background is the painting on the wall. It isn’t based on any specific painting. It features a reptile girl referencing an old piece I did while I was still in school. It also features a place I've always been kind of fascinated by. Zipolite is a small nudist beach in the south of Mexico in the state of Oaxaca. The current town was founded by hippies in the sixties but before that it was a pirate hideout and before that it was a sacred place for the Zapotecas. I think it’s different now but when I went, a long time ago, there was no Internet nor tv sign, Not even hotels, just some people that rented rooms in their houses. It felt like a time machine or something.

I can’t believe there aren’t movies about or set in this place. But that’s probably for the best. Let’s keep the secret.

Attached are the full res version of the piece and the first doodle I did of it on my phone.