Manic Baron Doodle: World Whale Day

As a DJ on RadioSEGA (www.radiosega.net), I enjoy being able to entertain and play music to an audience every weekend.  Other DJs do that throughout the week, including current site admin KC, who also airs The Manic Monday Show on a... guess which night of the week it is.   His setlist tends to depend more on silly (whether known or obscure) holidays that happen throughout the year.  The show inspired me to see if I could fit in a silly illustration for some weeks of the show!

This Saturday is World Whale Day, an even that always falls on the Saturday prior to President's Day (which in turn is held on the third Monday of February).  This is one of many whale-related events during the Maui Whale Festival, which occurs all the way throughout the month and is organised by the Pacific Whale Foundation.  It was founded in 1980 and honored humpback whales, which swim off the coast of the Hawaiian island that the festival is held.

Now, figuring out how to illustrate this got pretty OOC, I'd have to admit.  There have been fish in the Jak and Daxter universe, but none big enough to stand to the might of an empowering whale.  The least I could do is just have fun and have Baron Praxis ride a miniature orca whale on a vibrant Summer day - good for me as this also meant more muscle drawing practice!

The sketch for this was whipped up very quickly, but the lineart took a while to actually finalize, considering I had to keep on perfecting muscle placement based on prior guides I had used to this point just to make Ace Hardlight look muscular in one of my prior submissions here.  The biggest challenge with this was accentuating the back; a lot of the references for male backs I could find weren't really of the overly-muscular type, though I did eventually work out something from a photo reference and see how it would apply to the grand scheme of things.  By the time the show was done, once again I was not quite done with the cel shading, but due to its simplicity I also wasn't far off from completion and returning to it took a small amount of time to make this thing ready for consumption.

In addition, I'd also take the time to mention that others in the Discord had followed my example of doing drawings during the show as well!  Both of them involved Sonic the Hedgehog running away from a whale like in most games that feature one, though I got a laugh when KC referred to them as an "aquatic (insert-male-groin-part-here)"!  Oh, I love those guys so much... xD

So, there we have it!  This Saturday, do something nice with whales... even if it means taking squeak toys into the bath!

Jak and Daxter is a franchise owned by the guys at Sony Computer Entertainment. I drew this!