From the Four Horsemen of Apocalyse, to a bunch of random sketches, brainstorming took us to Mary Poppins, a twisted tale about Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ and the yellow brick road. Both of us couldn't pinpoint on something we would like to do together on the collab project. One thing we knew, we wanted to do something, and me being a big fan of Alice aka Silverqe's colouring prowess, I was really keen and knew joining forces with her, we would make an epic team. We also knew we wanted to do something that will hopefully blow everyone's mind, particularly on Threadless and Emptees.

After hours of general chatting, discussions and brainstorming, Alice uttered in our chat, "I've always wondered about an Alice in Zombieland. And then the description would say, "It had to be done".

I thought it was an AWESOME idea. Here's the first sketch of Alice:



Alice was really happy with Alice...??? anyway..... In my next sketch, I added more characters and framed the composition with the gates:



It was seriously looking too crazy for me and looked like a mess so I decided to take off the background and immediately, the whole composition felt 'breathable'.



Alice felt it wasn't Zzzzzzombieland enough for her and that Alice could look a bit more psychotic since she did just decapitated someone! I totally agreed with her myself. I really wanted to frame Alice and maintain the focus on her in the centre . The gaping mouth and the cat's eyes of the zombie Cheshire cat really helped with the composition. The diagonal lines coming from the cat's ears and the eyes really pushes the attention to Alice:




After a few suggestions and discussions with Alice aka Silverqe and some awesome feedback from the great Buko, I made some adjustments to the design and added the cards, reduced the 'evil-ness' of the cat's eyes and added the 'Eat Me' tag on the zombie's hand. I also added the number 10/6 on the Mad Hatter's card that is tucked in his hat to tie in with the fairy tale. I felt really good about the linework and the composition in the end but was a little worried for Silverqe when she takes it through for colouring due to the complicated linework.

Finished linework:



Alice aka Silverqe:

Don's lineart was mindblowing as usual, and I really wanted to live up to his excellence... the complex art was daunting but so fantastic to work with! He also included a few lighting and colour suggestions:



I began with several "test runs", just overlays of different washes of watercolor gradients to see what overall color combinations worked and what didn't. Settled on a purple-ish gradient over a deep golden wash, I liked the complimentary colors and the mix of cool/warm tones. Then started painting the details...





Don gave me several excellent lighting suggestions, which helped flesh out the characters more. I also flared some bright yellow light in the middle of the design to make crazy Alice stand out more, and colored the White Rabbit's 'blood' flow brighter because I liked the cohesiveness that the sword's stroke brought to the design (if that makes any sense.)



I made the Rabbit the brightest of the zombie characters since he's, well, dying the most violent of deaths. I kept the other characters in a more deep, dark, scary color scheme. The Cheshire Cat was also pushed into the background to bring more focus on Alice (changed the eyes to a yellow color on a suggestion from murraymullet, thanks dude.)

After I got all the main colors down it was just a matter of zooming in and zooming in and painting all the details. Again, Don's linework was just crazy good, very crisp and clear so it was very fun to work with. I played with many Levels and Hue/Saturation layers in the end, and eventually settled on a bright, saturated color scheme (relatively) because Alice in Wonderland was always a psychedelic place, even when zombiefied, right?

Thanks so much for reading!!

FINAL ARTWORK



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