3/7/19
For about a year I discovered a group called #RetroBlasting on #Youtube; a ruthless organization determine to... oh wait, sorry... wrong group. RetroBlasting (RB) is a fun, humorous but very informative group that examines toys and pop culture, mostly (but not limited to) of the 80s and 90s. Along with toy restoration and reviews, RB tries to examine the who, what, and why things were of yesteryears and the decision making process of shows, movies, and toys.
I enjoy their presentations very much, but I always thought their logo could use a makeover, so I reached out to the folks at RB and asked if they would be interested in an upgrade and to much to my delight they said yes.
To keep with the theme of the show, I decided to re-envisioned their character logo to the style of cartoons you'd find in the mid-80s which were some of the most exciting and influential mediums of pop-culture.
You can check them out on youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/user/retroblasting or their website at http://www.retroblasting.com.
So I begin my work process with their original logo which is based the show's two hosts; Michael French and Melinda Mock.
At the beginning of each show you see this logo with occasional variations depending on theme of episode (kinda like the Simpson couch gag).
I always had in mind to present the characters in 80s style cartoons so I started off with a rough sketch.
Once approved, I gather reference material and proceed with rendering the characters.
I'm currently running off of CS6 Illustrator and rendering this as vector images made most sense.
So typically I start blocking in the image.
I spend a lot on the face of my characters first before anything because in my mind the image won't work unless you get the face right.
As the character rending develop, some of the decision making process you have to make is color choices and design handling. Sampling the colors from the original logo was too dark and didn't matched up with the feel of mid-80s cartoons so you have to strike a balance between capturing the characteristics of both source materials.
Many cartoons in the 80s were done overseas in Japan so you get a feel of proto-anime here in the US. Many of the character designs were done by American artists, but the production was done by studios in Japan with a few expectation such as #Filmation. FB touched on this one of their episodes on a #He-Man panel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7OH9YXu_XI
I had to really examine how characters were rendered during this period, which uses quick simple shading and highlights. You have to remember that this was before CGI, so you're producing a lot of episodes by hand drawing/paintings and you're not going to have the tight renderings or crazy anime hair styles you see in the later decades.
The last thing usually tweak is the hair. I decided to cheat a little bit and give a little bit more rendering then you normally see in cartoons of the period. And there you have it.
Please consider being a subscriber of RetroBlasting and if you like their content, please support them at #pateron https://www.patreon.com/retroblasting.
They're producing great stuff and I look forward to seeing them grow within the pop-culture community!
