Cookin’

I’ve been cryptic on my social media accounts with this project, so I’ll just dump all the real info here, since…ain’t nobody coming here. WIP for my MOTU fan art project. The project I’ve only mentioned to people I know, IRL. I told myself I should share this stuff more, so here it is.

I always wanted to take a stab at this world, since I grew up loving the toys from the day I got my first bunch of figures on my 8th birthday, just a year or so before the animated series dropped. Having been first exposed to the lore via the mini-comics that came with each figure (I only really cared about Series One of the mini-comics), I was accustomed to this bizarre, somewhat gritty world where there was no Prince Adam or Orko, and Skeletor and his goons weren’t played for comedic effect. I dug that fact that we got barbarians who would swing an axe and also fire a laser gun. It combined D&D and Star Wars in a way I’d never forget.

My family got me He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Skeletor, Beast-Man, Mer-Man, Zodac and Man-E-Faces, along with Castle Grayskull and the Battle-Ram. Later on, Point Dread + The Talon Fighter was added to the collection. Always wanted to get Trap-Jaw and Tri-Klops, but by then, that ship had sailed and the toy line didn’t interest me as much anymore. But MOTU holds a special place in my heart, and lately, I’ve been enjoying revisiting that stuff that inspired me as a kid.

I do struggle to get into fan-art projects that involve simply recreating a familiar character in my style. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, per se, but my brain needs a bit more to sink it’s teeth into for me to really want to dive in. I needed to approach it from a more intriguing angle to really hold my interest. With this MOTU project, the first thought was “High-School kids. Post-Apocalyptic setting. Fantasy world with no real adult authority. Delusion.” And that’s all it took. No real “magic” at play here, just imagination. You’ll see what I mean.

I’ll be adding going through each character, sharing their turnaround sketches and some of the newly imagined lore, and posting it all here, real soon.