Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy New Year 2011

Well, it’s a brand new year and this is my attempt to follow through and be more resolute in my blogging on the creation of the Silly Supermarket Series.  Last I left it, I had planned to talk about a big story in the news.  Seems there was a controversy surrounding the California raisin girl and a new makeover.  This drew the ire of many as can be referenced here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/108296/sun-maid-girl-makeover-sparks-controversy.html?mod=family-love_money

Now when I saw the controversy it jogged my memory back to a Silly Supermarket test concept.  As you may or may not know, Series 1 & 2 of the Silly Supermarket Stickers were created by Artist Rick Rose.  Top Shelf Enterprises purchased all of the sticker designs, copyrights, etc from the artist.  Now, when it came time to create a brand new series using a new team of artists, we needed to see if we could actually pull it off.  We made a contact with Artist “Canada” to see what he could do.  The design was never intended to be released in a series but purely a test to see what he could do.  Perhaps we were “out in front” on this since the concept was created in 2004.  Anyway, Steve worked with Canada from an initial sketch design.  Canada attempted to put the concept into color but did not have any of the computer art programs to give the design the color and depth that it needed.  This was actually a blessing in disguise. Canada found another artist, Workhorse, on an artist for hire forum.  It truly was the most important contact made in the creation of the series.  With the first two pillars in place, Canada (for pencil roughs) and Workhorse (for color), the series was on it’s way.  Steve and I used to often talk of “having and easter egg” anytime a new revision was in our email Inbox.  It was truly exciting (and just a lot of fun).  Anyway, I share the rendition of Fun-Maid in the light of what was a controversy just a year ago.  Artist Workhorse tried something a little different with the background and that (in hindsight) was also ahead of its time.  Enjoy.

funmaid