#artofmatteldritch

[matt-eldritch]

What would've happened if you slept naked in the mansion? Would Wayne fashion the sheets into a toga when he brought you to the Forbidden Wing?

[matt-eldritch]

I have been reading The Toys of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe by Dan "Pixel Dan" Eardly and while the book is an incredible read on its own, what really fascinated me was how characters and vehicles from the original toy lines were radically redesigned for the 2000s He-Man reboot and for the subscription-exclusive Masters of the Universe Classics line.

I have a love for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and as I read the book, I got to thinking about the original Ninja Turtles toy line and how I could take characters from later iterations of the franchise (such as the 4Kids reboot, the 2012 reboot, the IDW comics, the 2018 reboot and the 2023 movie) and redesign them to fit in with those old figures. Since Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is my favourite cartoon of the franchise (and also the only one I've seen from start to finish), I chose recurring antagonists Hypno-Potamus and his boyfriend/partner-in-crime Warren Stone to be the first entries in what I call "The Retromutagen Collection"! I based their eyes off of Kaa from the original Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book as a way to display how they both have the power of hypnotism (I tried to have the hypnosis swirl in the centre of Hypno's turban but I couldn't make it look right). Hypno's torn tuxedo jacket arm and blue gloves are from when Bullwinkle would try and fail to pull a rabbit out of his hat in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I'd like to think that Hypno tore it off so he could reuse the fabric to make a matching outfit for Warren. Hypno's moustache and beard are meant to resemble the somewhat reddish-brown hair of his voice actor, Rhys Darby.

[matt-eldritch]

I recently came across the Batman 85th Anniversary character skins for the now-defunct Multiversus game and I honestly felt disappointed by them. I mean no disrespect towards the underpaid and overworked design team, but a lot of these designs (specifically the Powerpuff Girls, Jake the Dog, Finn the Human, the Iron Giant, Agent Smith, Arya Stark, Reindog and the Banana Guard) just looked like shoddily made fanmods for the game. The first characters I chose to redesign were the PPG and the Iron Giant, since it took little effort on my part to decide what parts of the Batman mythology their redesigns should be based on (I'm keeping my Iron Giant under wraps for now). As a redhead, I knew that Blossom would fit in the role of the Silver Age version of Barbara Gordon (who people incorrectly assume is the original Batgirl) like a glove. Since Bubbles is played by Tara Strong, a controversial voice actress that spent decades playing Barbra Gordon in various adaptations, it made sense to base her redesign on the 2019 DC Superhero Girls (which also helps avoiding a monotonous colour scheme). Buttercup, described as "the strongest fighter" in the closing credits song, is based on the Cassandra Cain version of Batgirl, often considered to be on the best hand-to-hand fighters in the DCU.

[matt-eldritch]

It's taken me about three months, but I finally finished my Super Mario Bros 40th Anniversary piece!

I actually hadn't known that this year was the anniversary of the first Super Mario game, I just really wanted to draw Mario and Luigi in the art style of the Paul Rudish Mickey Mouse series because that's the show I would model a hypothetical Mario cartoon after. The show utilizing designs from the golden age of animation is also why I chose to base Mario's outfit on his sprite art from the first Super Mario Bros game and Luigi's outfit on artwork from the original Mario Bros arcade game. I also gave them hairstyles based on their very first live action performers, Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells. The Mario Bros game having a pitch black background with a brightly coloured foreground lead me to making a variant where the brothers were painted with bright neon colours in order to resemble a black light poster or a theme park dark ride. I might branch out and do this type of redesign with other Nintendo characters such as Link, Samus, Captain Falcon and Fox McCloud.

[matt-eldritch]

Earlier this year I played the original Portal game and it was definitely as fun as advertised. I got to thinking "what would happen if someone like Batman was the one who was being subjected to GlaDos' tests?", which then lead me to thinking up an alternate universe where someone or something reprogrammed a GlaDOS into serving as the host of a multi-dimensional game show, one not unlike Wipeout or Takeshi's Castle. 

I gave GlaDOS an outfit that resembled Mr. Rogers and Mr. Butlertron to evoke a sense of trustworthiness but also to make it ironic in case she does one of her classic "sudden but inevitable betrayals", and I added sequins to reinforce that she's hosting a game show (though being in the shadows means that effect is lost on most people). Since her game design was too elaborate for me to properly reproduce, I gave her a more "low-tech" look to imply that her power had been greatly reduced compared to the original.

The title screen behind her was probably the trickiest to do. I wanted to give it an air of vintage television, so it took a lot of transformative filters, blending modes and chromatic aberration to make it look retro and glitchy enough to work. The game itself made me think of 1970s-era retro-futurism, so I based the title screen on the one from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The title screen colours were chosen from the four personality cores you need to steal from GlaDOS in order to defeat her. Her orange personality core, curiosity, is what I went with for the colour of her eye since she would need to be curious in order to run the game show. 

[matt-eldritch]

Here's an art gift I made for a very dear friend of mine, the ever fabulous @lovelytekki featuring two of her favourite characters, JFK from Clone High and Mega Man from the Capcom video game series, Mega Man, reenacting the "I think we're gonna have to kill this guy" meme I found on twitter a little while ago.

I tried out a new colouring method with these two where I had softer coloured lines on the inside while keeping a lighter shade of black for the outside and for under their chins. I also copied the method of highlighting Mega Man's helmet from The Venture Bros character, Ro-Boy (from S4E6).

[matt-eldritch]

Here's my drawing of Ahsoka Tano for my Colour wheel challenge! I based her on the work of @morvalii a wonderful artist who allowed me to model my Ahsoka on their own fanart. It's kind of funny that I have a character I headcanon as bisexual on the last day of Bisexual Visibility Month when I had posted fanart of Sasha Waybright, a canonical bisexual Amphibia character, on the first day of Bisexual Visibility Month.

[matt-eldritch]

I've begun watching #myadventureswithsuperman and I do like the show, I find that the pacing is too rushed and that the character designs often look too way generic for my personal tastes, especially when they're based on iconic #dccomics characters.

This is NOT meant to shame the production staff who work on the show, this is much more of a fun little artistic exercise. With that said, here are the ways I tweaked the design;

*I kept the general shape of the gauntlets she wore in the two-parter series beginning and also kept the hair colour, skin tone and eye colour out of respect. * Her top is based on the Livewire of the original DC Animated universe, with the lightning bolt acting as a reference to the original's leotard and it's incredibly deep neckline. * The lightning bolt emblem is a reference to the Zero-Hour Reboot Legion of Superheroes where Lightning Lad, going by the codename of Livewire, sported a similar design for the lightning bolts on his costume. * The wires around the gauntlets are meant to invoke the wires used in cranial electrostimulation, or CES, to treat cases of depression, anxiety and or insomnia. I wanted to suggest that she could have a sympathetic backstory or that her equipment radically alters her personality and she's become addicted to its power.