I was commissioned by Jason Waguespack, author of the children's Fantasy series The World of Rigel Chase, to create the book cover for his newly published title called Rise and Fall of the 80's Toon Empire: A Behind the Scenes Look at When He-Man, G.I. Joe and Transformers Ruled the Airwaves. His vision for the book cover featured an old CRT television set connected to a VCR player with the floor covered with video tapes. On the TV screen would show an original character that resembled something from one of the cartoon series his book goes over.

The Wire Frame

It wasn't a difficult decision to go with a Transformers rip-off. Out of all of the 80's cartoons, it's this series that has made the largest and most successful comeback in modern culture thanks to the Michael Bay Transformers movies. But in my opinion, I would have chosen to draw a robot over a Little Pony or Smurf any day.

The Sketch

I had to be careful to create a robot that had all of the typical aesthetics that Transformers are known for, but also present it in a new way so that I wouldn't be violating any copyright laws. This is of utmost importance since this is a published work and will be sold commercially, unlike my mere fan art drawings. Some of the Transformers characters I used as reference include Optimus Prime, Starscream, and Megatron.

The Line Art

When drawing my line art, I wasn't sure how thick or thin my stroked needed to be. I had to experiment with it before deciding to make my lines thick. I thought this made it look more like an older cartoon. In contrast, I believe using thinner lines are better for drawing something in an anime style.

I wasn't concerned with making sure the drawing was absolutely perfect. The shapes may be a little lopsided and uneven, but the drawings of the series itself wasn't perfect either. As a matter of fact, 80's cartoons all have that in common to some degree. The opening cutscenes were always impressive, but the average frame from episode to episode was pretty lackluster.

The Flat Colors

My colored version of this drawing resembled Optimus Prime too much, and the author suggested that I switch it up. Therefore I went with an opposite color scheme to Optimus in the final cover version (at the end of the post). I don't think it looked as good, but I understood why it was necessary.

The Finished Illustration

The cel-style shading was easy enough to make. The background clouds were easily rendered in Adobe Photoshop (Filter > Render > Clouds). I wanted it to look easy and cheap, corny if you would. I wouldn't promote this drawing as being one of my best, but I think it's very fitting considering the purpose. This drawing was only one piece used to compose the actual cover for the book. Using stock images purchased online, I put everything together and made the cover for Rise and Fall of the 80's Toon Empire.

The Book Cover

Book Synopsis

Rise and Fall of the 80s Toon Empire is a bird's eye view of a time in television history. It not only reveals the creative inspiration behind so many '80s cartoons, but it looks at the overall TV industry - showing how new cartoons were sold to TV stations(hint, the stations didn't pay a penny for many of them), how cartoons helped innovate the selling of home video cassettes, the ratings wars for the attention of young audiences, the fight by He-Man, Optimus Prime and G.I. Joe to conquer the big screen, and in the end, why the toon boom crashed.

I have illustrated several other book covers before, but this one was probably the most enjoyable to create. If you are a fan of 80's cartoons and find this interesting, it would be great if you picked up a copy on Amazon. You would be supporting the author, Jason Waquespack, and in an indirect way also supporting me and the work that I do. Thank you very much!