DEV>Monkey Island Character Design (II)

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Today, the first Monkey Island game in thirteen years is OUT. What an excuse to add more faces to my Monkey Island Character Design series, which is something I absolutely love to do. The low resolution of the actual characters gives an illustrator a lot of room for artistic translation and you can do whatever you want with them, especially if you don't give a fuck about the MI3 redesigns. Yes, I'm a MI1/MI2 purist, so no, no plans to draw the overrated Murray.

First, the characters I drew in 2020. You may have already seen them, but I've made some little adjustments here and there:

Guybrush: My only inspiration is that masterfully arranged bunch of pixels. His face (sometimes deadpan, sometimes quite expressive for such a low-res character) tells me everything I need.

LeChuck: As with Guybrush, the game's character design is so good that I don't need more than those few pixels to "see" LeChuck, although I wanted to retain the zombie pirate's maniacal expression in the excellent illustration by Steve Purcell for the MI2 box cover.

Elaine: Also not based on anyone, but I drew her with a tiny mole near her nose as a tribute to Geena Davis in the only post-1990 pirate film that actually deserved to succeed.

Stan: Loosely based on Bruce Campbell. Don't really know why, but I see my Stan and it feels... right.

Otis and Meathook: Turturro and Goodman were the perfect jumping point to give these two a great visual personality.

Carla: This one's not a loose resemblance. My Sword Master is basically Rihanna.

Largo LaGrande: Just some classic Hanna-Barbera design (especially Ed Benedict's) for Scabb Island's main bully.

And now, the new designs:

Wally: I couldn't draw a version of the saddest cartographer in the Caribbean that didn't look like a child until Ron Howard and his old-teenager face came to my mind. My Wally is not really based on Howard, but he helped me to get the "old child" look right.

Herman Toothrot: Also difficult. I didn't want Herman to look like a random castaway, but I wasn't able to draw one single sketch of him that didn't look plain and generic... until I thought of John Lithgow. I'm so happy with my version of Herman.

Voodoo Lady: This one came out quite easily. I couldn't resist giving her Morgan Freeman freckles.

Hope you like them.


(09/2022)

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