The Indoor Kids - Merch contest #2

I was listening to one of my favourite gaming podcasts the other day - The Indoor Kids - and they announced they were having another merch design contest. I did an 'Angry Birds' themed one last time, and a Bioshock one too - but neither was a winner.

I have BUGGER ALL time to get something in for this one, so I set to tonight. It's going to be real simple this time. Seeing the hosts are a married couple, I wanted to get something which linked to video games ( obviously ) and also had some kind of male / female connection. I thought a 'fist-bump' between the Street Fighter II characters of Blanka :

and Chun-Li :

might be a fun thing. They were always my favourite characters, and the ones I did best with back in the arcades. The fist-bump thing would also be a nice little joke, playing on the brutal violence of the Street Fighter II game.

First thing first - sketch of a fist-bump :

which was actually two seperate sketches I melded together in Photoshop. Then - a slightly more defined sketch over those using the tablet :

Once that was done, it was time to get the lines down using the path tool :

The brush width was set a little bigger than I thought it was - but I kinda liked the thick lines, so I kept going. Not bad so far - the next step will be get some colour down, maybe some gentle layer effects ( I like the idea of a half-tone effect - but I'm damned if I know how to do colour versions of that ... ) and a title with 'The Indoor Kids' featured semi-prominently.