The Great Banana in the Sky

"Yummy, me want big giant sky nanner!"

So I was sitting with my wife and baby just having a regular conversation on Saturday. Out of no where this idea popped into my head to have Donkey Kong flying in one of those barrels from the DK Country series to get at the moon, which he believes to be a big 'ol banana. I ran and grabbed my sketch book and doodled it out. The first one was super crude, and I even put a glass bowl on his head, like a space helmet.

Here is the second sketch I did after thinking it out a bit more. I decided to add Diddy Kong in there too. After looking at this I decided to try a different style this time. Instead of my usual think line art, I decided to do a flat color design.

For the background I used a navy shirt for the night time backdrop. I did all of the background stuff in photoshop and all of the character art in Illustrator.

Originally it did not have the lighter blue fade either. To make this a 6 color shirt, I had to get creative with the colors. I had 3 browns, one being for the barrels. I instead used the lightest and darkest browns halftoned together which freed up the lighter blue. I think this really sells the idea.

There was a lot of talk about the moon when I showed this to people. I originally had it as a full crescent moon. But the majority ruled and I modified it a bit, I rounded the bottom, and kind of flattened the top some to make it more banana-like. Currently I have submitted this to Shirt.Woot, and it has made it to the editorial meeting. Cross your fingers for me!