Well, this was the last assignment in my Illustration Studio class. We had to create a series of four illustrative postage stamps with a black and white theme (I chose the sub-theme of good vs. evil...as displayed by various characters from film). My original idea was to do four stamps based on Tim Burton characters ('cause, you know, a lot of his characters have the whole black and white motif going on [Jack Skellington, Edward Scissorhands, etc.]). But my teacher shot down that idea...well, sort of. Instead, she wanted me to adopt Tim Burton's style and create stamps based on famous villains from cinema--because good guys just weren't as interesting, and I had to agree.

But then one thing led to another and I eventually ended up having to draw both famous villains and heroes within each stamp. I chose the Wizard of Oz, Batman, Peter Pan (although my teacher actually suggested that one), and Star Wars. I hope to God you all were able to identify these characters without me having to tell you.

Anyway, these were all drawn in ink (two of them I had to finish in one day). My arm felt like it needed to put in a sling after I was done with it all. X_X

I tried imitating Tim Burton's style, but as you can see, none of the characters look convincingly "Tim Burton-ized" (especially Darth Vader, who was the hardest to draw >_< ). Instead, they all look more like generic caricatures. Believe me, I'm not really proud of these illustrations; most of the characters look embarrassingly wonky, even for cartoons. And oh my God inking in those damn backgrounds was a complete nightmare--you have no idea, seriously. The BGs on the Batman and Peter Pan stamps literally made me want to cut off my own hands. (I know they don't look like much to you, but I spent HOURS inking those areas in and getting each one to transition from dark to light. Not a fun task).

Okay, enough of my bitching and moaning. Sorry for the tediously uninteresting description, as usual. And oh, obviously: these are just the illustrations, they aren't in "stamp form" at the moment.

But if some of you actually enjoyed looking at these, then I guess that's enough for me. (Out of the four, my personal fave probably has to be the Wizard of Oz, just because it seems marginally less crappy than the others. Marginally).

The Wizard of Oz, Batman, Peter Pan, and Star Wars (and all related characters) are copyright to their respective owners. I only know George Lucas for Star Wars, I have no idea on the other three.