Rusty Saddle Bike Night to Now That's Class

The Rusty Saddle Bike Night to Now That's Class is tomorrow night! The Big Ride starts at 7pm at Blazing Saddle Cycle, 7427 Detroit Ave, and ends with a raffle at Now That's Class 11213 Detroit. This is co-sponsored by Blazing Saddle and Rust Belt Welding. Even though I do not ride a bicycle, and it would be insanely frustrating to be driving a car on that street at the time, I would still love to see Detroit flooded with bicyclists riding westbound. There's something awesome to me about seeing a huge group of people on bikes traveling in a pack. I blame AKIRA.



I did this black and white version because it was taking me a long time to get this finished and Paul at Now That's Class really really needed it to get the word out about the first one, which as I mentioned above is TOMORROW, April 5th, 2012! So I blasted this version out and I hope it made it to the hands of the people that need it! I saw some up at Gypsy so I know it's at least out in the hood.

Here's what Paul sent me when he hired me for this one:

The idea the Blazing Saddles guys wanted was something like was like

"Zeus on top of a mountain or something crushing a scorpion or some type of animal in one hand and either stepping on or crushing a bike or a pile of bikes. Maybe with lava and fire in the background"

If you've seen any of my previous work, you should know that this is a completely ridiculous, but right in the center of my wheelhouse, request! It's funny, sometimes I really like when a client has a pretty specific idea in mind, but on the whole, clients have pretty odd ideas about what's even possible to do in a drawing. Paul is always a total blast to work with and the Blazing Saddle/Rust Belt dudes are all rad so I would bend over backwards to make sure this work is as ape-shit-bonkers as I can make it, and it visually represents the event and vibe of what they're doing here. I hope I did that!



Which brings me to my next point. Even though I like the b/w version fine and it get's the info out as well as it needs to, I really really wanted this to be in full color that burned off the page. I could almost see it on the page as I was drawing this, how it needed to be to really set it off. So, I took the extra time and really went bananas on the colors on this one. Also note that under the text is a very rough, crusty version of Blazing Saddles on the bottom left and a very rough, sketchy version of Now That's Class on the bottom right, with a much much windier version of a path between the two. I don't really mind that this got covered with text at all, but I like to think that it plays out pretty well even with the text.

So, hey, if you ride a bike in Cleveland and want to get involved in this, DO IT. It's probably going to be a ton of fun, and hey- you get a free beer if you ride your bike to the bar!