FURIOUS GEORGE ART PROGRESSION

The entire COLLECTION OF ARTWORK below was drawn by the wickedly-talented Luis Diaz for the All-New Series 5 Garbage Pail Kids. The cards ended up being 9a Furious George and 9b King Kyle. I have the entire progression of art for this card, from concept to final in my collection. Each step is important to the final outcome of the card. I have included a short description of each step in the process.

ROUGH PENCIL / CONCEPT ART

The Rough Pencil Layout is the first step when creating a card. The artist will draw a rough layout of all the main elements and characters on scratch paper. This will help them design the overall image. Even at these early stages in development, the artist must pay particular attention to details, like making room for the banner, namebar, etc. Even though the sketch is extremely 'rough', it is still easy to see the finished product starting to emerge.

TIGHT PENCIL

The next step is to make a clean, tight pencil drawing on tracing paper, over the Rough Pencil (layout) drawing. At this stage, the artist can define all the details in the art. Then, the tracing paper is put on white paper, and copies are made. This copied image of the art is used in the next step.

COLOR ROUGH

Using the tight pencil copy (above), the artist will use acrylics to paint a color rough. The artist does this to know what the colors are, what kind of lighting and shading things have, and to make sure everything is bold, clear and readable. It also limits or eliminates having to make changes on the final art where it is much more time consuming and costly to do so. With the rough done, the artist can see ahead of time how the painting will look, and where they may need to make an edge darker or lighter for greater punch.

FINAL ART

For the final artwork, the artist may have a copy of my tight pencil drawing made onto heavy card stock paper, and then cover it with a couple coats of acrylic white gesso so it is light gray like a pencil drawing. The artist will paint in acrylics, starting with light colors and going to darker ones. For Garbage Pail Kids, it is common to paint the flesh areas first, then the clothes, then the props, and lastly the background, using some airbrush to contrast with the hand-painted figure. Doing the painting itself takes about eight or ten times as long as doing the rough.

FINAL PRINTED STICKERS

The publisher has the printer scan the final artwork, and add the logo and character names to the art. The cards are printed on a large sheet as a complete set, then cut apart and collated into small packages and boxes of cards.