What’s a Skeletor?

Who am I kidding–I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL TUESDAY. So here now, is my inaugural sketch, the Lord of Destruction himself:


click above for larger view

I ‘m also posting this on the forums at He-Man.org–you can find the thread here (my screenname on He-Man.org is Bootleg, so you’ll see that stamped on any art that I post there).

For those who don’t know, Skeletor is the arch-enemy of He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe. Skeletor’s hobbies, like most 80’s cartoon villains, include sinister cackling and incompetent attempts at world domination.

This is actually the sketch that got me rolling on the whole sketchblog idea. I busted out a pretty quick sketch of Skeletor, inked and everything, because I was just really itching to do a finished piece. I chose Skeletor because he’s a character whose costume I have pretty well memorized (yes, I am a dork), so digging up reference would not slow me down. Color-wise, I took a few liberties where it seemed logical to do so. As for why he’s wearing a Batman-like cape… I guess I just felt like drawing a Bat-cape.

For those of you who are familiar with my artwork, you will notice that this sketch is much simpler and looser than my normal anal-retentive clean and detailed illustration style. Basically, I am trying to loosen the hell up, so that I can be a little more productive, instead of agonizing over every little detail.

My normal process is something like this:

  1. concept sketch (any medium)
  2. loose sketch (blue pencil)
  3. tight pencils (.5 mechanical pencil, F lead)
  4. inks (usually tombo brush pens and sakura microns)
  5. colors (photoshop)
The process for Skeletor, and for 95% of the sketches that you’ll see on this blog is more like:
  1. rough gesture (blue pencil)
  2. tightening/inking (extra fine pilot v-ball pen and pentel sign pen)
  3. colors (photoshop)
So you can imagine that the process is much quicker this way. My coloring style is still pretty clean (and i’m still sooo slow in photoshop), but so far this is working. I might experiment with some looser coloring styles in the future.
Comments and criticism welcome.

For more on Skeletor:

5 thoughts on “What’s a Skeletor?

  1. i am both terrified and a little…sexually…excited…bythissketch! great start especially for the ladies….man, will tuesday and friday ever get here?

  2. Skeletor was an evil madman who needed to be stopped. The fact that you pay tribute to him with a sketch is a tragic waste of your talent.

    Eternia was put into danger time and time again due to the efforts of this villain. My cousin lives there, and Skeletor’s insane actions have screwed up his life time and time again. In fact, Skeletor basically got my cousin fired from a great guard gig at Castle Grayskull. I won’t get into the specifics, but basically, Jody (my cousin) found this big present for Prince Adam in the hallway, he picked up, knockout gas, Skeletor takes over the castle, He Man takes him out, you know the drill. Anyway, they say my cousin didn’t follow proper proceedure for the “discovery of unmarked tributes.”

    Now my cousin works cleaning up after dragoncows (don’t ask) and it sucks.

    So keep drawing villainous jerkoffs–it’s really, really cool. Why not take a shot at the Decepticons that caused my dad’s auto plant to shut down? Or Cobra Commander, who caused the devaluation of currency in Java?

    It’s all fun and games, man… All I got to say is, one day Godzooky is going to screw up your life royally and you’re going to be left to wonder what the hell you’ve been doing with your time for the past few years.

  3. this is why i love you, you’re an amazing dork…and a pretty good artist too.

    -ren…from somewhere DEEP in oklahoma…where it is OK!

  4. rick: as always you are a gentleman.

    annie: blake is gonna kick skeletor’s ass when he reads your comment. i promise you more sexy warriors with deformed faces in the future.

    anonymous: why do i think i should know who you are? I MUST KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Tell meeeeeee!!!

    ren: you sweetheart! thanks!

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