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Dec 19, 2025

Thank you so much to John DeLucca for taking part in the Q&A session on the Protomen fan server! The following is a transcript of the questions he answered, but there's some more he talked about in-between. He also showed off a few sketches and discussed his other works.

Q: What was the process of designing Megaman for ACT III, and how did you finalize that? A: "I've drawn Megaman for myself a few times, especially back when I first encountered the Protomen. My version of him was always a very Japanese, Yasuomi Umetsu-style superhero like Casshan: Robot Hunter. He always looked like that. So, when I got to do them for ACT III, the Protomen had their own somewhat established idea internally, like within the band. They know what he looks like. The official artwork of him has always been… it's dark, obscured. So we tried to keep the elements that were important to him. The trenchcoat, the helmet, that kind of stuff. When I started, I did a bunch of sketches of his face without the helmet. A lot of them, there was like a slider between man and machine."

"We settled on one that they liked the best. And, that was it! I did a basically finished thing, and we sat on it for a while and made sure it's what we wanted. I think, Commander felt like the eyes… I'd given him these Teddy Ruxpin, like Steven Spielberg AI robot kind of eyes. I had given him these, like… eyelids that they felt like, was too puppydog. A turning point in the design was when I gave him sockets. Like the T-800, pushed the eyes back into a socket… They wanted him to have a toughness, instead of this, like, he looked really youthful and naive. We kept referring back to the ACT I booklet. He wanted more seams around his eyes to try and get as much continuity between ACT and ACT III as possible."

Q: Which ACT III poster was your favorite? "I think there's a few that I'm especially proud of. I think Calling Out is one of my favorites, and A Show of Force was another. Those two… I got a little carried away on. After I did those, I changed the level of how I had to do all of them to. We got started on doing these probably a little too late… By the time I got to Buried in the Red… I'm doing a cityscape with raindrops on the window… and multiple characters! There was no way these were going to be simple. Even ones that I had done early on, I had to go back and revisit and bring them up to the same level as the rest of them."

Q: What will you be doing at MAGfest? Will you be selling posters? A: "I'm just there with a table, hoping to be right next to the band. Usually when we are there at the same time, we're right next to eachother. Selling prints, I wouldn't be selling Protomen artwork. That's their stuff, they hired me, unless I got express permission from them, I wouldn't sell Protomen stuff on their own. It's an ethical thing for me. But I'll have prints of my own stuff, some of my Protomen-inspired things. I've got some original drawings, a few stickers, a coloring book… I just put together a zine of some of my horror illustrations. I'll have some copies of a horror anthology comic that I did a segment for that I think is pretty cool. Mine's a 10-page segment, kind of a trans revenge, DC comics inspired thing. Trigger warning on that for some transphobia and gore? But otherwise, check it out."

"As far as what the band is doing with these posters, I'm not entirely sure. I hope they have posters, I know everyone's been clamoring for them, I'd love for everyone to get all the posters they want, I'm hoping they'll have those for you, but I don't know 100%."

Q: What is your favorite Pokémon? A: "To my shame, I'm not a big Pokémon guy. I think I just missed it. I'm 42, and it started to get popular with the age group just behind me. … Any of my favorites will be some of those early ones, Venusaur is cool…?"

Q: Who's the one band member you would get a beer with, any day of the week? A: "Well, Kilroy is a party guy… So he's always a really fun hang. … I would say that the ones I'm closest to, that I've talked to the most, are Commander and Murphy. Gambler, we chat sometimes. And Bakker, a bit."

Q: What is your art process and tools? A: "My art is digital. I used to do drawings on paper, and scan 'em, and color them digitally… Just Photoshop, I've got a brush that has a subtle texture on it that I like, for doing texturing. … One of the in-the-box brushes for Photoshop. … A lot of the Frank Miller and Mike Mignola influence coming through. … We were trying to do this fast, so plunging as much of this into the dark as possible keeps things moving.

Q: What was the timeline and process for the ACT III artwork? A: "Before I really understood what they were for, I did a batch of like 18 sketches. Well, more than 18 sketches. Sketches for 18 pieces of art. … I got approval on a few of them, and started going for the finish for some of them. … I realize they were going to be releasing them weekly… … and I was like 'Oh, crap!' … I had to get into gear, I was working on them out of order. … One of the first ones I did, was The Fate of Thomas Light. It became a problem because once I did the Hold On (The Distance Between) art, we figured out what Mega looked like, we had to go back and fix The Fate of Thomas Light and make the face match, and put the cauldron on. … It was tight, we were working on it up until the last second. … It was a stressful time.

"We had a pretty hard deadline on all of them, and there are some that are only going to be in the booklet. So, I was working on those as well. I got behind that one time that everyone noticed. … I didn't take any of it personally. I thought it was kind of fun to take the hit for it, personally. I didn't want anyone to think the band screwed up. It was me. It was a me thing! … A lot of work, very quickly."

Q: What inspired you to get into art? A: "I'd always drawn, as far as I can remember I liked to draw. I never considered it a possible career until a highschool art teacher convinced me that it could be. … She was an inspiring person and taught me to love film too, like older film… We watched High Noon in her class, and that was like… Wow, I didn't think old movies could be like this. … There was nothing else that I loved, I just did art because I had to. I drew all the time because I loved it. Shockingly, my parents were supportive and agreed that I could go to art school."

Q: How do you feel like your individual style has changed? A: "I don't feel like I have one, there are people that look at my stuff and say 'I can tell that's you.' I never felt like I developed a style? Maybe I'm totally wrong, but artists can't really look at themselves objectively. But I would say, if I have a look, it comes from… film noir posters and pulp novel covers. That's what I wanted to do, back in art school. … I painted in oil, and my senior thesis was all pulp novel illustration stuff. I think that still carries through, I still like hard shadows and realism. … Comic art and film are all my biggest sources of inspiration. If I have a style, I get it from those things."

Q: What business decisions should amateur artists make? For charging for cover art, was it a flat rate or royalties? A: "I've never gotten a royalty agreement. It's tough out there and it's getting tougher. We're all aware that AI is becoming a problem. It's tough too because the industry is gonna have different standards."

"If you're looking at publishing, there's a resource… It's called the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook… …There's no union for artists, so the GAG gives artists standards for fairness. … It gives you guidelines on pricing, on contracts, a range for pricing depending on your experience or size of publisher. It also deals with all different industries. …I would look into the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, it might even have sample contracts in there. … Also just check the internet, if you get a contract. I do this all the time… just google how much I should get for this kind of job and see if that makes sense for me or not. And it's gonna change while you grow, you'll start asking for more as you get better, more work."

"… It's a tough game at the moment. So try not to get discouraged? Because you're gonna get rejected a lot, we all do. … You have to be willing to do a lot of stuff. Put in a lot of hours. The only way I've done this, and I'm not successful, to be honest with you. I've been doing freelance for 5 years exclusively, and some of it just hasn't been good enough. … I look at other artists, you always gotta compare yourself, you shouldn't but you're gonna. There's so many amazing artists out there that also aren't doing that well. I found out that Corey Brickley, who's an incredibly cover artist, as far as I know, makes like $30,000 a year. I haven't broken $20,000 a year. The only reason I can do this is because my wife has a good job. Not to be a downer, but it's hard. I'm very privileged to be able to do it right now."

Q: Was the inspiration for the ACT II poster from Streets of Fire your idea or the band's? A: "They almost always come in with a solid idea that they want. Especially for covers. I've had more room to play around with the ACT III posters, but the covers they always know what they want. That was a them thing. … It also came along with Joe being Edward (I think he meant the main character of Streets of Fire, who's name is Michael) Paré and Diane Lane being Emily, and Will Dafoe being Wily. … That was the main direction. There was details we futzed with, but that's it."

"It's funny, I saw Streets of Fire a while back, because I like Walter Hill, (he made) The Warriors and Southern Comfort. It's a weird movie, cult movie, yet one of my first big illustration jobs is a poster inspired by this off-the-wall movie. That's really funny. To have that immediate connection, seeing this kind of silly movie. That it meant that much to them. … I felt it set up our relationship."

"Commander gave me a playlist at some point… I had at least two songs from Streets of Fire, some M83, some Bonnie Tyler and it was the whole Protomen inspiration playlist. It was awesome."

Q: How has Terminator inspired your work with the Protomen? A: "There's some of you that know a lot of that intersection… but when it comes to how it inspired me, it's more of a general vibe. The cinematography, just how it makes you feel. When it comes to referencing particular things, I leave the details to the band. The Sniper is, I assume, the Terminator. It references the red eyes, I'm sure that's Terminator. … I used the T-800 exoskeleton as a reference for robot designs, for The Cover Up to a degree. Movies tend not to find their way into a very specific way into my work, more into a general vibes way is how media effects my stuff."

Q: How open to interpreting the Protomen's work were you? Did you come to a design for them and they denied it? A: "That has happened… I've missed the mark with a sketch, we don't let it get too far before they shut it down. ACT III stuff, sometimes there'd be details that need to be there that change the entire composition. … They are very specific, they've known the story for a long time and have a specific idea of what needs to exist in each piece. What does this piece need to say? They know all that stuff, so there's not a lot of wiggle room. My space to be creative is in the composition when I'm working with them. I'm not helping to write the story or anything.

Q: Is there a chance we might receive full reference drawings of the main characters/robot masters? A: "Like a character sheet kind of thing? … It's tough because I personally love seeing the Protomen fanart. I worry that really nailing everything down as like 'canon,' I don't want that to stifle anybody's vision for what the characters could be. I think Light as a coat and a scarf, in a lot of the drawings that's all you can see of him--and his face."

"I like having room for people to play around, but I don't know. One day, maybe. I know at one point, I don't know, I don't know if I should say anything about this… but I have done a full turnaround of Joe. I don't know if we'll release it or not. For any particular reason. It's something that'd be fun for me to do. As far as anything official from the Protomen? I don't know if that's something they'd do or not."

"I love taking really super 'deformed' characters like Megaman and giving them human proportions. I find that a fun challenge. It's a little different too, because they had a very specific reference point for what they wanted it to look like."

Q: What is your all-time favorite movie poster? A: "I got into the alt-movie poster collecting world… the ones I'm thinking of are like alt posters. There's a Rich Kelly Django Unchained poster that I really like. But official posters… R.O.T.O.R. I don't know if you've seen the poster, the movie's trash but the official poster slaps so hard that it's frustrating. … I had a bad movie podcast (Garbage Theatre), and I kept getting super hype to do posters for these awful movies. I thought it was so much fun to make garbage movie look cool with a poster. So, yeah, R.O.T.O.R or the original Mad Max artwork that is super similar to R.O.T.O.R actually.

Q: With how ACT III has released with the weekly artwork, did you ever get that feeling while you were doing that work? Also, how does a story-based project effect your art process? "I like collaborating, I like limits, so being given a story is a lot more fun to me than trying to sit and labor over a story that I don't have details for. … Limitations really help you be creative, so when you have to work within a framework, I love that. When the sky's the limit, you get overwhelmed and you can't focus or bring a vision to life. The thing about illustration over fine art is the limit and the collaboration. I think it always makes better work. You're usually working with an art director that's guiding you a little bit.

"The part that I love best about working, is that when I know what I'm doing, I'm just sitting there and working on it. The process stuff, I always struggle with. I always want to get right into it, which is never good for the work, but as soon as I get that sketch done and get into the final work, all the better."

Q: Which of the posters for ACT III were you the most proud of? What ACT III track is your favorite? A: "I'm really happy with a lot of these. … A Show of Force I was really happy with… I forget the track now, the one with the boots, where she's walking away from Mega. (This City Made Us) … That was one of the toughest ones, compositionally. I had a few sketches to get the feeling right. I was really pleased when we nailed that one. … My favorite track was… sorry, I don't remember the names. I've had the songs for a while, but I had one file that ran from beginning to end that didn't have track names. But the one with the sax solo… Light's Last Stand! That's my favorite track. It's so good! And the version I had didn't have the solo yet, it hadn't been recorded yet. There was a weird interlude that was good, but once that sax got in there, it was like a whole other beast."

"… I dunno, it's so Protomen! Once you gotten to know them a little bit as people, and where their influences have come from, I'm sure they've been waiting their whole careers to get a sax solo from that dude. It's cool!"

Q: If you had a stage name as part of the Protomen, like The Gambler or Raul Panther the III, what would it be? A: "They got me these questions early, I've been thinking about it today. And I think I landed on R. Django MacReady. So, obviously RJ MacReady from The Thing, and Django referencing my love for spaghetti westerns. It is a cool name! When it hit me, I was like… Yes! Yes, dude! That's it!

Q: How would you draw Protoman? A: (after some time setting up screenshare) "This is the very first piece of Protomen fanart that i did. This is what got me noticed by the band actually. I posted it online and didn't know that they had seen it. And then my wife got this printed on a t-shirt that I wore when I first saw them live. And they recognize it, and pointed me out in the crowd, saying 'YOU! We know you!' and we talked after the show. And they had seen this piece, and that's what made them hire me for the first job with them. So, there's something about this that they liked. There's some weirdness to it but yeah."

"… If I was going to design him now for the band, they have an established version of Protoman that I would try to nail for them. My understanding is that he would be more mechanical than Megaman, he'd look more robotic. … The poncho and the chaps, that would all be there."

Q: There used to be an interactive Act II website full of your art, do you have any of that art still saved? A: "I found this… I don't know if this update ever got posted… but this was like the last version that I worked on. There's icons for Facebook, Twitter, what is that, MySpace? A contact link. We were trying to expand it and make it better. …For people that didn't experience it, this car drove up and around this tunnel, and a garage door closes, this train went by every now and again… Joe drove up and stopped here. The train illuminated the Sniper in the alley over here. It was a fun little thing. I kind of shudder to look at it now, the Photoshop skills were a little rudimentary at the time."

"This is the reference photo for the ACT II cover… It was me and my wife. In our old apartment, god, it's messy in there. It's funny to go back and look at my old reference photos of me standing in weird poses and taking pictures of myself."

Q: How did you settle on the design for Mega? A: "This is my sketch, first pass. Here's the puppydog eyes. And then he's more smooth, rounded. And then here's the final, more angular, more robotic. And the eyes are a little less puppydog."

Q: The composition for Hold On (The Distance Between) kind of reminded us of Hamlet. Was that intentional? A: "Yeah, that was 100% a reference point."

Q: What is the process like, working alongside Casper? A: "Casper's great, when he's art directing me on non-Protomen projects he's very clear about what he's looking for, if something needs changing, he can articulate why and how. Clearly and rationally, no wishy-washiness. And when I'm done, he does his own thing and I can always trust that it's great. The process is always the same with any client. …We chat about what we do, and then sketches, and then a sketch is chosen, refined, and then I do the final. He's great to work with. And he's an awesome designer, so I definitely wanna shoutout Casper.

Q: What 80s media influence you the most and how? A: "For me, these movies… I probably like 70s movies more, but… John Carpenter movies, almost all of them. Alien and Aliens, Blade Runner, Terminator, all big touchstones for me. The non-80s stuff would be spaghetti westerns like Once Upon A Time in the West and The Great Silence. I love samurai movies, cyberpunk anime, Akira, Cyber City Oedo (808), Goku Midnight Eye, like anything by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Roger Deakins are huge for me. But it's hard to name everything. I'm a big film guy, so I've watched a lot, absorbed a lot, so naming individual influences is tough."

Q: Who is your least and most favorite Bloodborne boss? A: "My least favorite was Amygdala in the late Chalice dungeon area, I don't know if you've played that far into the chalice dungeons but there's another Amygdala and it killed you in one hit. So I basically had to perfect that boss and it took me forever and it made me super frustrated, so I hated that guy."

"My favorite… I mean, Father Gascoigne is hard to beat. Very cool. … I like most of them. They're all very cool. The alien boss (Celestial Emissary) is a little wack, the giant alien. Why can't I remember it's name? (Celestial Emissary). The Pthumerian Elder in the Chalice dungeons was a cool boss too, I thought. Let's go Gascoigne. He's iconic, super cool boss."

Q: What's your McDonalds order? A: "It changes. I mean, I like a Big Mac, a double quarter pounder with cheese. It's usually one of those two things."

Q: How do you manage the balance between enjoying your art and having it be overbearing as a work mode? A: "It's tough sometimes. I don't work there anymore, but when I worked at American Greetings, I kept getting distracted by stuff I wanted to do versus the stuff I had to do. I'd be at work drawing fanart, ignoring my real job. The struggle is real for feeling creative and wanting to do something and just not having the time. I don't get to work on things I want to do nearly as much as I want to. It's a tough thing, but whenever I'm doing something, I usually get into a groove I start to really enjoy it even if it isn't my favorite project. I'm not burnt out yet! I feel like I will be, I'm starting a big graphic novel project this year and it's going to be tough. I'm hoping I don't die, but I might! We'll see!"

Q: Could you tell us more about the graphic novel you'll be producing this year? A: "It's a historical fiction set in the 80s in Iran, about the use of chemical weapon. It's kind of a grim subject matter, but I'm starting on it now, like, this week. I know, historical 80s. I'm also old. I say historical because it takes place in the past. There's a lot of military vehicles and stuff, and I'm just like… oh boy. But we'll get through it."

Q: What is your personal favorite project that you feel is underrated? A: "It's tough because the Protomen stuff is all appropriate rated, I think. I mentioned before that I like to make posters for bad movies, and I made a poster for a movie called Warriors of the Wasteland which is like an Italian Mad Max rip-off. And I did it for--there's a gallery in LA called Gallery 1988, they do mostly pop culture stuff. They have an annual show called Crazy for Cult, and I did that poster for that show and sold zero copies of a print of that poster… I loved what I did, I was really proud of it, but it's also for a property nobody could possibly care about. So, yeah, I'll say that one is my most underrated thing.

"… And I can speak on the Mountain Goats poster, because there's a Protomen connection there. After the ACT II vinyl released, there's a trade show called Making Vinyl and it's like design awards for physical music packaging. Not exactly sure how the nomination process worked, but the ACT II vinyl got nominated for three categories. (Best Vinyl Album Cover (Illustrated), Best In Show, Best Vinyl Gatefold, and ‘They Said It Couldn’t Be Done’ Award) And we didn't win any, unfortunately, but I was sent to Detroit as the representative for the album at the award show. And I met the art director for Merge Records while I was there. Trying to be a professional illustrator here, so I gotta talk up the art directors, I put my card in his hands and told him who I was. And then years later, he contacts me to do the Mountain Goats album (Bleed Out), said he'd been holding onto my card, waiting for the right project, and I thought that was so cool and sweet! And also got to do work for the Mountain Goats and that was incredible."

Q: Do you have any advice for someone who struggles with perfectionism? A: "That's honestly a struggle I have too. I think the only thing that has… deadlines! Deadlines help with perfectionism. If you're doing something for yourself, set your own deadline and try to stick to it. I think just working on the same piece forever isn't helping you get better, it might be making the piece better, it might not. It's hard to say. I think finishing something and starting over again is how you improve, doing more work, not noodling on one thing. That's my advice. Deadlines are the thing that keeps me from working for eternity on the same piece. It's part of why I don't do all that much personal stuff. I have another comic that a friend of mine wrote that we were gonna do together, that I spent so god damn much time on these pages, because this was my first comic, it's gotta be the best thing I've ever done! That it just never went anywhere, so now we don't have the comic. I think it's better just to finish something than to try and make it perfect."

Q: If you had to chose, on a desert island, Mac and Me or Nukie? A: "Would you believe I haven't seen either of them? I don't know… I know the scenes from Mac and Me. I guess I'd have to--I've seen Red Letter Media do both of those movies. Mac and Me sounds like a more watchable movie, to me. Sorry to disappoint but I'm not super familiar with either of them."

Q: Is there any resources you recommend for learning digital painting? A: "It's tough because I just kind of brute forced it. When I was in art school, like I said, I did oil painting. And digital painting was kind of a side class. So, I always tell people to think of digital painting as a medium, it's not a tool, it's a medium… …You have to be able to draw, fundamentally. Photoshop isn't going to make you a better artist, so doing fundamental stuff. Knowing how to draw. If you already know how to draw, it's getting comfortable using a tablet or one of those screens, but I still use a tablet. You have to get used to it, it's a different feeling form working on paper. Photoshop's hard, it's such a robust program, it's really about using it and familiarizing yourself with the tools and what they do. I use Google all the time, if there's something I don't know how to do, I ask the computer and it tells me."

"You also need to be--this goes back to perfectionism a little bit, is that working digitally give you so much power to alter and nudge and change every little detail. You've gotta be careful to not get lost in that, it'll consume you."

"It's really about learning the program--I say Photoshop because that's what I use, but if you're using Clip Studio Paint or whatever, you've gotta learn what it can do and how those tools work.

Q: How did you draw the cityscape for ACT III? Did you just set up a perspective grid and go? A: "More or less, yeah. It's not the most efficient. This was a challenge, I hadn't done anything to date. To this date, it was the most challenging illustration I've done. When it comes to technical stuff, buildings, vehicles, robots, I'm not all that good at them. I struggle with them. If I pound my head against the wall, I'll eventually get there. And that's what happened with the cover. I looked at a lot of pictures of cities, I picked out details of buildings to emulate. Tried to keep it diverse in the architecture as much as I could. But so much of it is about atmosphere. It was a really tough job, honestly.

Q: Which movies do you think we should watch, to better understand your work and your work with the Protomen? A: "Blade Runner has always been a big touchstone for me. When I was doing that website illustration, we were just looking at Syd Mead. It was the most incredible production design achievements in film, I think. Blade Runner for sure. Me? I always say Alien is my favorite movie of all time. I love everything about t, again the production design is incredible. The cinematography is beautiful, there's some shots in there that blow me away. Either of those would be good ones to watch."

"I'm trying to think of what would be a weird one, like an out of the box one. I think watching some westerns would be good, or any samurai movies. I haven't gotten confirmation from the band, but I think The Great Silence is a super strong candidate for a good spaghetti western to watch. It's grim as hell! For me, it matches up with the Protomen's kind of story. I think The Great Silence is a good one, if you can find it."

Q: Are the EP art for This City Made Us and the album art meant to mirror eachother? A: "You're talking about the three buildings with the two figures? I think it's depicting the same scene, in part. The figure walking away from the other figure is the same scene. So, yes, in a way. Like I said, they play a long game. They've known where the story is going for a long time. There's callbacks all over the place. You guys always find them."

Q: Is there any details you wished we noticed in your art, that you think was important? A: "I don't think so! The fans are incredibly meticulous. A lot of the little connections have been made. It's definitely fun when people find them. I see the posts of someone discovering and going, 'Oh! That's a reference to that!' Like, yes! Gratified!"

Q: If you could make the official poster for any piece of media in history, what would it be? A: "I would love to try a Seven Samurai poster. Gimme a crack at the Seven Samurai poster. I talked about movie posters a bit, how I got into the alt movie poster collecting world. As an artist, it's impossible. It's the kind of stuff I would love to do! There's so many phenomenal movies that i think deserved better posters. And even some horrible movies that deserved better posters!"

Q: What's a project you'd love to do with the Protomen, that hasn't been done? A: "I know a lot of people are interested in doing a comic version of the story, and that's awesome. I'd love to do a comic version."

(our recordings end there, but if anyone happens to have a recording of the last few minutes, or a clear memory of it, please let me know!

#the protomen #act iii #protomen act iii #john delucca #Youtube

ancientmagnolia