Hotter Than Hades
06/October/2008
It tastes like burning!
Ralph from an episode of “The Simpsons”
In this second in a series of exercises creating labels for craft beers, jalepeño pepper was the variety suggested by my brew master friend, (who by the way has never actually Frankensteined one of these to life, it’s on his to-do list). Although it sounds like the hideous offspring of two perfectly good ingredients maybe they would work together in the same sense “fire” and “extinguisher” do. Anyway, whileI can only guess what the experience might be like, I imagine that this would be a creep up from behind and drop the anvil type of event. Suds that lure the taste buds in with a smile- and then drop the torch. Sneaky-Hot.
Continuing the mythological characters theme, Hades, God of the underworld was suggested as the perfect spokesmodel so I did some sketching and came up with the drawing on the left. I’m keeping the compositional concept of having a defined space that the character breaks out of but changing things up a bit by tightening the focus to a portrait instead of a full figure. This allows me to zero in on the facial features that define the duality I’m creating with a theme of sneaky then hot and still keep the pepper front and center.
Here I’ve tightened up the sketch and further developed the sneaky expression on the left side of the face. He needs to be smiling that, “Come’re, I have something for you,” kind of grin. The right side on the other hand needs to be fiery. Like he is literally ablaze but I still want to keep a humanoid look. I don’t want that side to be too ghost like, more solid that ephemeral. I’ve amplified the expression, twisting the smile and pulling the ear into a devil’s point.
And here is the end result. The left side is rendered in cool colors, blues and greens. His hair is all curls and waves in a kind of foreshadowing of flame. The right side, all warm reds, has a yellow orange light reflected from below, a reference to The Underworld. The hair has become flame and has even singed the flat graphic behind it, which certainly is not ancient Greek in design, but whose swirling movement reinforces the flame motif and works as a nice counterpoint to the three-dimensionality of the figure.
Ralph from an episode of “The Simpsons”
In this second in a series of exercises creating labels for craft beers, jalepeño pepper was the variety suggested by my brew master friend, (who by the way has never actually Frankensteined one of these to life, it’s on his to-do list). Although it sounds like the hideous offspring of two perfectly good ingredients maybe they would work together in the same sense “fire” and “extinguisher” do. Anyway, whileI can only guess what the experience might be like, I imagine that this would be a creep up from behind and drop the anvil type of event. Suds that lure the taste buds in with a smile- and then drop the torch. Sneaky-Hot.
And here is the end result. The left side is rendered in cool colors, blues and greens. His hair is all curls and waves in a kind of foreshadowing of flame. The right side, all warm reds, has a yellow orange light reflected from below, a reference to The Underworld. The hair has become flame and has even singed the flat graphic behind it, which certainly is not ancient Greek in design, but whose swirling movement reinforces the flame motif and works as a nice counterpoint to the three-dimensionality of the figure.