Tuesday 9 July 2013

The Ones That Got Away: Part 2 - Tank Girl




Hey Hey,

Well here's another installment for 'The Ones That Got Away' and this one really is to me THE one that got away from me. it pains me to talk of this loss but here goes....

Nearly a year a go I got wind from a friend that Tank Girl writer Alan Martin had put that he was looking for artists to submit for a new series of that very same girl of tanks.
So me being a well and truely true blood Tank Girl fan thought why the hell not and asked said friend to mention my name and work to Alan. He did. Alan got in touch! We got talking and in between me gushing like a pre-pubescent fan Alan asked me to draw up my Tank Girl.

So I got on with it. We had to approach the publisher with how I would take the series on so I got rough sketching for Alan to see if I could draw his girl right.
If i'm honest I got a bit carried away at first, sure in myself that I 'got' Tank Girl and to put it mildly I was a tad bit excited to be sketching her in an official manner so I naturally wanted to keep it classic and pay a big fat load of homage to Mr Hewlett and Mr Dayglo.
In those respects the first batch turned out well... but it wasn't right. Alan wanted something new and I'd drawn her too young.


So I had another go but aiming to make T.G a bit older but still trying to keep on that classic punk look.






















These were better but still not what Alan wanted.
So we decided to go a completely other way and go for an overall new look, new hair, new clothes just overall something they hadn't tried with Tank Girl before. Alan suggested to head down a sort of WWII French resistance look. So I looked into women fighters of that time, the clothes and guns they used and mixed it up a bit with the mens wear! and so we came up with this:

Sadly as the title of the blog suggests it didn't go all the way. We were both really happy with the final look but somewhere down the line at the publishers end they didn't see it working. This was intended to go somewhere alongside the current series with Mr Cadwell's work which if you compare the art I can totally see why it would clash, so I'm sad but obviously it was for the better.
I'm still in contact with Alan however and we have plans to still do something together just maybe not T.G related. So watch this space.... Alas Tank Girl really is the girl that got away.






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