Tomorrow’s kind of an important day for me, and I’m freaking out a little bit.

At 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 26, I’m presenting an hour-long discussion on digital art at the Scranton Public Library as part of their ongoing Maker Monday series. In my discussion, I’ll be explaining everything from concept to final product and online sales.

I don’t know why I’m as nervous as I am excited about the whole thing, but I am.

The genesis behind the whole thing was pretty simple. Through my role at Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pa., I was able to coordinate a presentation by one of our Police Academy instructors during the public library’s Scranton Reads initiative.

Following the evening presentation, I ended up chatting with Liz Davis from the library about the possibility of presenting something on my artwork. I happily obliged, and quickly dug into my idea spreadsheet for a design that a new audience could relate to but that kept in line with my geeky mashup style.

What emerged as the front runner was “Another Castle.” The piece takes the famous Super Mario Bros. line of “Thank you, Mario! But our princess is in another castle” and turns it on its ear. Toad never really explains what castle she could be in, and this mashup envisions Mario traipsing into the world of powerful robots and finding himself on a cliff overlooking Dr. Wily’s skull-centered fortress.

anothercastle 1 copy anothercastle 2 copy

I put the sketch together in pieces to avoid confusion in my early line work, then began the process of retracing my lines digitally and adding appropriate weight and depth to the image.

anothercastle 3 copy
anothercastle 4 copy
anothercastle 5 copy

 

While I did take a longer-than-expected break in the overall process to finish the Great Lehigh Valley Soccer Festival logo, I was able to jump back into the design easily and get prints created as gifts for attendees of Monday’s presentation. The folks at Center City Print did an amazing job with these posters!

anothercastle 6 copy

I buried “Another Castle” a little bit to get the full effect of the final reveal on Monday, but you get the drift.

If you’re in the Scranton area tomorrow and would like to get inside my head a little bit, please be sure to visit the Community Room in the basement of the Lackawanna County Children’s Library at 520 Vine Street, Scranton, Pa.

 

 

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