This week’s cover is our take on the diabolical scandal of the Milady NFT project that left many in the community with a bitter thought.
To begin with, we had a few ideas rolling to show either the Bored Ape legal case or the Milady’s situation in the NFT verse. Given the subject's weight around Miladys, we chose to go with it. After a brief discussion, we agreed to show a pretty doll that is dark on the insides to depict the scandal. It had to be more than that simple idea, so we incorporated the seven deadly sins into the picture to show the root causes of all evil deeds. After the concept was decided, Dudly suggested that the cover could be done in my style of drawing. Lo and behold, that’s what we did!
Honestly, at this point, I’m not sure what my style is because this was the style I had briefly adopted a few months before joining Redlion. Had Red come a few months later he would have met an Amal that paints pictures inspired by Felix Scheinberger’s style. That being said this was of course one of the styles I feel quite comfortable with and was deeply inspired by. The works of the Berkeley Bonaparte (illustrators Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson) and Robert Wiliams will be forever close to my heart.
I set out after studying many of their works to ascend into that style as I had been quite rusty with it because of low practice. The hardest part was creating the ideas for the seven deadly sins than drawing them. Ironically I started with ‘sloth’. I scavenged for ideas and was knee-deep into Blake’s version of hell and other scriptures when the thought struck me– Dante’s Purgatorio! Dante describes ‘Sloth’ as not laziness, but the lack of love or desire to pursue something. I found an accompanying excerpt in Italian that I etched onto a paper. Next, I took on ‘Pride’. I searched for dynasties that were removed from the face of the earth due to their pride and ignorance. Who better than the Pharaohs who thought they could take their riches and victories to their after-lives. Then came ‘Envy’ in the form of jealous Stonehenges; ‘Wrath’ in the form of Vaga, a character I often use in my artworks; ‘Greed’ as an eye on the hand, metaphorically depicting the greed one has, to own everything they see; ‘Gluttony’ as a merman in pursuit of a giant burger, and finally ‘Lust’ is depicted using the reference from “A Clockwork Orange”.
The artwork was next given the animated touch by Dudly to rev up the artwork to rad-er heights. In the end, it was definitely a style that I longed to use for the cover and this was absolutely a blast of a concept for it. Hope y’all loved it as much as we did working on it!
