132: “Payload”. G.I. Joe “Real American Hero” Series 6, 1987.
Payload was the second of two figures that came with previously mentioned epic play set: The Defiant Space Vehicle Launch Complex. Payload was specifically the astronaut / pilot of the Defiant Shuttle. I should point out that at this point in time “space” was indeed a new frontier for the GIJOE toy line. Imagine 1987, you are a 10 yr old kid, and you can finally launch your team into space. Well I can’t. Because I never actually owned this play set. AND, none of my friends had it either! Ahem.
Nevertheless this was epically fun to draw, albeit THE most labour-intensive of ANY of the illustrations I have done for this project to date. As previously mentioned the Defiant was a bottleneck for me and I sort of put it off for awhile out of FEAR. Or laziness. I’m not sure. Anyways, to give you a sense of time once again, all the art for Payload was about 2.5hrs (that includes the side view drawing though), and if you total ALL the art for the Defiant components (shuttle, booster, crawler/gantry) it was about 10hrs.
The result of all of this though was to yield quite a few supplemental pieces, so be sure to check out the EXTRA ART PAGE on the site. I’ll be offering these pieces as prints soon. It was actually a challenge to figure out how on earth I was gonna showcase every aspect of the Defiant within my layout of the figure art, between Hardtop and Payload. But I did it!
