Sunday, December 07, 2008

Speed Racer-The Next Generation















Earlier this year I began doing style guide art for the new Cartoon Network animated series, 'Speed Racer-The Next Generation'. Working alone and in collaboration with some friends we created a number of poses and character art for licensors to use as they needed. These can be used on anything from garments to school supplies to paper plates. IDW Publishing decided to use a couple of my pieces for the covers of their Speed Racer-Next Generation comic. For issue #1 they used some exisiting style guide art, but went with mine on issue #2. There's an ad for the next issue, also using my artwork, in the back. Unfortunately, I didn't get any credit in the individual comic, but I should get a mention in the trade paperback collected edition. The background textures in both were added by someone in the IDW art department, utilizing other style guide art. The leaping Chim Chim was published in IDW's digest sized Speed Racer-The Next Generation Animated, Vol. 1.


Posted here alongside the finished Illustrator files are some of my original pencil drawings and inks for a few of the pieces I did. Most of the art seen here was done this way, with the exception of the Chim Chim ones, where I did all the inking directly in Illustrator. Besides the stuff here, and the Next Generation art that I did in collaboration with friends (they would do the pencils, then I would go in and tighten that up, ink it, and do the final Illustrator art), I also did some classic Speed Racer art, updating old drawings, including two pieces used as life-size standees for display purposes; one of Speed and the Mach 5 and the other of Racer X and the Shooting Star.


All artwork copyright Speed Racer Enterprises.

7 comments:

Everybody's gotta be in a Gang said...

Congratulations again!
I especially like the Chim Chim drawings.

The Keeper's Notes said...

Thanks, Dan! I had fun with the Chim Chim ones.

Anonymous said...

Dude, this is great stuff!! I love the smooth linework on all of them, really nice! Good job, Justin! Are you gonna be doing more of this stuff? How did you get hooked up with Cartoon Network? Congrats man, this is awesome awesome work. Keep it up!
Love the Chim Chim drawings, btw.

The Keeper's Notes said...

Thanks, Jess! Hopefully, there should be more Speed Racer stuff coming up. A friend of mine runs a graphic design company that is working with Speed Racer Enterprises to put their style guide together. He called on myself and a few other friends (Carlos, Rob, Aaron, Derek) to work on it. Glad you like the Chim Chim drawings. Those were the most fun to work on.

Jason Quinones said...

it all looks great dude!

Glenn Byrne said...

good post Justin! congrats on landing a cover!
that's always a nice portfolio plug...
good to know there are more down the pike...
like everyone, I'm all over the Chim...
nice work!

Johnny Supersonic said...

Kool! I didn't get to see all of these. Once again, nice solid job on these.

All the world loves a robot chimp!