Dated 25/05/2011

As he examined Modo's impressive feet, little Lawliet couldn't help thinking that life might have been rather more fun if he'd been born on Mars.

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Better two-and-a-half years late than never...(!)

Most probably know by now that last year I decided to stop taking requests. That decision had been prompted by the fact that I already had a gargantuan list of requests dating back as far as August 2008 - only one of which I had actually completed, as my motivation and time for working on other people's ideas were slim to nil. As such, most people were informed from the very start that I would probably never do their ideas, but there were a few for whom I kept the possibility open... even if they didn't know it.

One of those was a certain  chaoscomm - AKA Lawliet.

Lawliet had made a suggestion way back in September 2008 that involved putting his character in a paw fetish scene with Modo of Biker Mice From Mars. I'd always found something oddly intriguing about the thought of drawing Modo, so the suggestion stayed in my head all this time. The subject then came up in conversation again back in December 2010, by which time I had made my mind up that I would draw such a picture at some point. Then recently, when Lawliet mentioned the Biker Mice in a discussion on Eccentricities about 'Unappreciated Characters', I thought I'd finally give it a go.

Given that Lawliet's original suggestion was fairly vague, I wasn't 100% sure exactly what he would want me to draw, but in any case, I eventually came up with this idea. It's nothing particularly original, but hopefully it will suffice!

Modo seems to be another of these characters whose design varies considerably between artists. His robotic arm seems to be the subject of particular artistic license with numerous shape and colour configurations, so I simply settled for what I liked the look of. There are also some variations concerning the way his patch is strapped on, but I found this arrangement the least intrusive - even if I'm not sure it makes sense.



I had been finding my artwork refreshingly easy of late, but sadly this one brought me right back down to Earth with a bump. I'm not great with 5-toed human-shaped feet, nor was I sure how to draw the torso and head leaning forward from this frontal perspective. As such, I really struggled to get it drawn out and went through about 8 sheets of paper before I had anything I vaguely liked, hence the proportions and anatomy are by no means perfect.

I was also given trouble when I decided to start colouring it. Things had already been complicated by the fact that my LCD monitor - which my brother only bought me at Christmas - has recently stopped working, meaning I have had to return temporarily to my poorly-calibrated CRT monitor. Given how this impacts my ability to judge my colours and shading, I've been reluctant to do too much artwork with it until my LCD is repaired, but I decided to give this a try anyway.

I was then given extra hassle when PaintShop Photo Pro decided to crash on me after half-an-hour's work on the background - work which, of course, I hadn't yet saved. As such, the new background might look a little rushed because I was rather annoyed with having lost the original. Haven't made that mistake for a while!



Some might notice that this picture doesn't have the same tonal depth as many of my pieces. That is actually deliberate; for whatever reason I frequently find that the more I shade my pictures, the less appealing they are to me. It's quite a bizarre thing that I have noticed many times in the past, potentially caused by my preference for cartoony characters, or possibly because I just lose interest in the picture the longer I spend working on it. As such, I have come to the conclusion that sometimes I need to stop shading before I reach that point whilst the picture is still appealing to me, even if it is not as artistically accurate as it would be.

Anyway, enough chatter. I hope this picture is to everyone's liking - most of all Lawliet. Sorry I kept ya waiting, bud.




RRRex