I had a few hours Thursday night that probably should have gone to something more productive. But the urge struck me to do something completely unattached to anything. I started by doodling some robot designs. A shape stuck and I played with it a little bit settling on the design you see below. You can see a definite Ashley Wood influence there, but hopefully it’s different enough to be called it’s own. Then I put a character facing off the robot.Upon looking at it again today I realized the composition was lack luster. So I made a few tweaks: Our hero is made larger which brings her closer to us, and helps emphasize her importance. The robot is smaller, blurred a bit and has a white overlay on it. This drops it back a little farther giving the appearance of more space between them. And I cropped it a little bit too. After tooling with it for about a half hour I came to what I think is a much stronger composition.

First pass:

Second pass:

Anyway, it was fun, and it fulfilled my need to do something different. Now it’s back to cute robots, space rodents, and freelance work.

Edit: Ok, looking at it again I think I like the original better. After posting it I showed it to some friends and they pointed out the second pass was a little weaker because both characters take up the same amount of real estate, and the robot doesn’t look as menacing. So, I’m going to make one more pass and post it soon. I’m curious which version do you like better?

Edit 02: Here’s pass three. I’m digging this one.