"Tomb 63" ("The Mummy")
Part of why I like doing this gallery is to experiment on different things. They might be minor risks or something completely out of my depths. But I try nevertheless in the pursuit of becoming a better artist. Tony shared the same goal with me when the two of us tackled these movie homages. We were always aiming to make the next picture better than the last, or at the least, different. We never tried to look back.
We started this gallery with a homage to "The Mummy Returns". I did the art while Tony supplied the colors. He wanted to try out a new technique which was, at the time, something neither of us applied to our drawings. Years later the two of us collaborated on an homage to "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" by taking the same idea from the first drawing - an Egyptian Shaman about to sacrifice Kari as a offering to his gods - and updating it to how far we had progressed as artists. It was arguably one of the best pictures we tag-teamed on. Again, moving forward.
So when Universal decided to revamp the franchise as part of a shared monster cinematic universe starring Tom Cruise and made the Mummy a goddess named Ahmanet, I knew what Tony and I would have done: taken the illustration from "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" and given it a gender swap (known in online community as Rule 63). I have no doubt this is what we would come up with. And part of me wanted to continue the mantra of pushing onward. But with a heavy heart (and it was heavy), I also realized what the experiment on this picture was going to require in order to properly do the gender swap idea. That thing which took me completely out of my depths.
I would have to try drawing like my buddy.
You may notice there's no signature on this. It's not out of shame for the picture itself. Far from it. I'm pleased how this turned out. And in the process of illustrating, I was able to incorporate little pieces of Tony's actual artwork from other pictures. What was borrowed I leave up to everyone to guess (you'd be surprised). But when it was finished, it was still a homage where I approached it from a Tony at his level in 2012 instead of what he would have been like in 2017. Even more so, I walked a thin line of dishonoring his amazing talent and his memory. I can't see myself ever doing another stunt like this again. As much as it was nice to have his physical presence in the gallery one more time, this was too painful looking back and pondering scenarios of what could have been.
Of course, making this picture was not as painful as watching the actual Tom Cruise film. Owww! - Jake