Family Vacation

So this week's topic was "Time Machine". As soon as I read the topic, the first thing that popped into my head was this incredible scene from Samurai Jack.

My first idea was to create a similar scene and make a time traveling scientist warrior character. Here's what I came up with after playing with Illustrator for a while.

It just looks like a cheap rip off! So I ditched it, and started fresh on paper. I did a bunch of sketches.

I liked this, and decided to simplify it further. I wanted to make it look very 60s style cartoon, so I drew a hat on him :D I wanted to make it flatter without perspectives like that Samurai Jack shot. After sketching for a while, I finally drew this.

I was happy with this, and I realized how much I love the process of simplifying something!

Then, I got it into Illustrator and traced it. Here's the first draft of it.

I guess I got the forms right on this one, but the colors were just awful. It still looked too busy, and there were too many things in it fighting for attention. So I let it sit there for a night. Next morning, I looked at it, and the color scheme just came to me. I went in and swapped the color swatches. And I think it worked. I also added a couple of other characters to make it look like a family. Finally, I used the ever-so-beautifully-retro-futuristic font "Neutra" for the sign board. Here's the final image again.

Let me know what you think!