April: Your Beast is Corny!

It's APRIL. That means it's the return of The Corny Beast at Melt bar & grilled! Here's the description from the Specials Menu:

The Corny Beast

Our wicked version of the almighty corndog! An ultra jumbo all beef dog char-grilled then stuffed inside the sandwich with double American cheese. Slathered with our special cornbread batter then deep fried. The result is pure carnival goodness! Chipotle ketchup on the side for dipping.

The initial idea for this was to somehow incorporate a corn maze into the poster art, which, I had never heard of corn mazes before, or if I had I don't remember- anyway, at first I thought it was pretty clever of the originator of this phenomenon because corn is also known as maize, I thought it was a play on words or... something... but, I don't know if that was the case. A corn maze is corn grown in the shape of a maze, sometimes with bonkers images or words incorporated into the pattern.

I tried this idea and it was confusing and looked like it was going to difficult to understand that that's what the image was, plus I wanted to make the maze actually possible to get through, and that was super hard to do while making it also look like corn. SO, I decided to just draw a maze for the poster.



Here's the rough draft, which I draw these at 50%, 5.5" x 8.5", so it's kind of small. I just drew a grid of 1/8th inch squares and got started to lay out the maze. I also knew I wanted to draw a cartoon dog. Drawing dogs is super fun after you get past the awkward stage of them looking wrong. They're pretty hard to draw, because even though you can include the stuff that makes up a dog- it still sometimes just looks not right, but once you do that enough times, something just clicks and you figure it out and BAM, you're a dog drawing machine. Also, there are a billion types of dogs.



So, after I did the rough, and got approval from Our Great Cheese Überlord, Matt Fish, I redrew the thing at 11" x 17" in ink on a piece of Bristol drawing board. I really like the way the dog looks, I wanted him to be ultra cartoony. This may be the cleanest, most streamlined and straight forward thing I've drawn in ages. I didn't even splatter this with ink.



The maze does work, I think there are even multiple paths to get from the top left to the bottom right, but I had to cover some of it up with text, obviously. Maybe I'll offer a limited print run of the poster with no banners? I dunno, that just occurred to me as I was typing this.

Color-wise, I think this came out pretty good. Nice and corny, following through on the simplified cartoon dog.



This coming weekend, April 6th and 7th, is The Parmageddonator, in honor of The Terminator midnight screening at The Cedar Lee on Saturday the 7th. The sandwich is 2 Potato and Cheese Pierogi, Smoked Kielbasa, Potato Pancake, Barrel Aged Sauerkraut, Horseradish Mustard and Sharp Cheddar, vegetarian option available. Yes, it's for real, a 2 potato and cheese pierogi AND potato pancake. On sandwich. That also has Smoked Kielbasa on it.

I actually had to draw this one twice, and I still feel like it's less Arnold-ish than I wanted it to be. He's a hard nut to crack, that Termintor. I like the final version tough. Simplified it again, which took just as much time as doing a more complex poster, if not more.



Saturday Night Fever is screening at the Capitol Theatre on April 21 at Midnight. Melt is going disco with The Tight Trousered Travolta; Ohio City Pasta Cheese Ravioli, One Big Spicy Italian Sausage, Marinara, Provolone, vegetarian option available. As ridiculous as that name is, I bet this sandwich will be freaking delicious.

This one, oh man, this was a mess in the coloring stage! This took a really long time to color and layer in all that texture. It was challenging for sure. I had never seen Saturday Night Fever before, but it's way better than I had imagined. I'm not a huge disco fan, but I gotta admit- it's pretty infectious.



Lastly, but not leastly, here's the dessert card. I kind of wonder if anybody pays any attention to these drawings at all. Have Melt regulars notice I keep up with these characters every month? This time we get to meet their pets. I have no idea why I did that, other than I thought it would be fun, especially for the bear to have a fish. At any rate, these desserts all sound dope!