Pickled Betty Boop

(click on image to enlarge)

Trip to Japan countdown: 26 days

It seems like it is taking forever for the days to go by............

Work this week has been busy, but not too overwhelming. I worked on an illustration of a basketball player for for one of my clients. I think that the illustration turned out really well. The only problem was that the client seemed to think that the BB player looked a little too ethnic......... So, I had to change some facial features and illustrate some hair on his head. This wasn't a problem for me to do.... but was it really necessary? Is that adjustment really going to sell more of my clients product? For me to be able to do these types of changes I have to always remind myself that the client is always right.

I have also been keeping myself busy at work with an internal illustration project. This has been really fun for me to do. It is letting me illustrate in my comic book style once again. It has been over 6 years since I really have drawn in this style. I haven't really had any problems with remembering how to do it, I have just had problems with my speed. I can remember I could knock out a full page illustration in about a day. (pencil, ink and color) Now it is taking me almost three days to do the same type of illustration. I should have started these in my "Pickled" style and I would be able to get them done a lot faster.

The illustration above is of the classic animated character Betty Boop. She appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop series of films produced by Max Fleischer and released by Paramount Pictures. With her overt sexuality, Betty was a hit with theater-goers, and despite having been toned down in the 1930s, she remains popular today for this portrayal of sexuality. Her her first appearance was on August 9, 1930 in the animated cartoon Dizzy Dishes, that was the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Betty was designed by Grim Natwick. Grim was an animator that worked at Walt Disney's and Ub Iwerks' studios. Grim is credited with being the one responsible for creating the character, which he modeled after Helen Kane, a famous singer and actress at Paramount Pictures, the studio that distributed Fleischer's cartoons.

I think that this is one of my favorite Pickled Drawings.

Enjoy,

Jack