It began with a rather ugly Christmas card.
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| What you can expect in the mail from me at Christmastime |
The subject was the delightfully offensive drag performer Daytona Bitch. Jeremy and I had made dirty Christmas cards to sell at Red Herring’s Reveal Me at The Rivoli in December. Of the four cards I made, the shiny lipped, beady eyed caricature of Daytona was my favourite.
I was unsure how she would react. At this point, I had seen Daytona at previous shows eviscerate hecklers with her biting wit. I prepared myself to be torn a new one. And yet, I hadn’t expected how Daytona actually reacted- with joy. She loved the cards, especially the ugly one.
Red Herring highly recommended Daytona as a potential Toons On Tap model. When a performer meets Red’s high standards and earns a recommendation, we take notice. Jeremy and I researched Daytona after the show, and found she had a She Ra outfit among her costumes. It was love. The very next morning, we booked her for Toons.
For the event poster, I wanted to create the feeling of heavy metal album art. If Toons On Tap was a dictatorship and not a team effort, every single session would feature drag queens and metal music. To begin research, I sketched out the compositions of various albums and fantasy art.
I decided to make the poster square, like a vinyl cover, rather than the usual letter size. "Toons On Tap" would be placed across the top like a band name, with the model's name positioned in a bottom corner like an album title. Importantly, I knew I needed enough negative space to place the event info. The image I had in mind was She-Ra menacingly posed on a jagged cliff against a night sky and a full moon.
I grabbed a toy sword and had Jeremy takes reference photos of me trying various poses. The pose I decided on had interesting angles and fun foreshortening... and yet, I had one big problem. In an effort to avoid cheesecake, T&A poses, I ended up with a rather angry pantyshot. Should I alter the costume to be more modest? Would She-Ra wear booty shorts under her dress? Or, should I give the Princess of Power a hefty package? I would revisit this later.
Next, I drew the pose and tested the composition and colour in Photoshop. This first draft was eye bleedingly bad.
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| Ick |
Poor She-Ra had giant banana hands, and was standing on rocks the colour of an ugly insurance office. The cheery, Saturday morning colours of her costume looked silly against a purple and black sky. I still wanted the image to look ‘metal’, but I decided not to use a dark background. Just ask my poor teachers- it is nigh impossible to get me to stop using black.
I thought back to the albums I looked at while researching, and one in particular came to mind.
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| Colour can be metal |
Rather than set the white and gold She-Ra against a dark sky, I decided to put her in the heat of a midday sun. As an added bonus, I found the solution to the upskirt problem- the lighting!
So, round two.
Much happier with the colours, I spent the next week of evenings hunched over Photoshop. The poster was birthed.
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| Jeffrey approved of my use of the Megadeth font |
Overall, I had far too much fun making this. My favourite part to paint was the red jewel in the sword as I had no idea what I was doing and it still turned out how I wanted. If I were to redo the poster, I would draw She Ra to resemble Daytona more strongly. I’m not sure if the facial features and large feet read as the character being a drag queen, or if She-Ra just looks like a strange looking woman. Plus, I’m still not happy with the hands and will focus on improving my hands in future posters.
As for the session? Daytona Bitch was a flawless She-Ra.
