'The Blind Hydra'

My friend Bob and some of his pals are going to GenCon, a big D&D con out in the midwest somewhere. They were going to have t-shirts made up for the event, I'm thinking maybe for a team game or something? Not entirely sure. So anyways, I get this email earlier today:

Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:32 PM

Subject: Hey

can you give me your interpretation of 'The Blind Hydra'?
Just a quick sketch...I need to get the orders in for the t-shirts soon..and I dont have a graphic yet.

Bob Smith (actual name)

So here's what I came up with. Didn't reference a hydra at all so it sorta looks like a 9 headed Nessie. I think the cane, cup, and dark glasses are all pretty obvious jokes to make, but I was especially proud of the banging heads 'oww...' in the background, hehe:)

One thing I did struggle with on this one was if i should draw all the heads. I always remember 9 as the number, and that seemed like a lot to just cram in. the economy voice kept saying "this is a great chance to do less! be cartoony!", but it just didn't feel right...you don't want to tell people what it's supposed to be... luckily after i had roughly done 5 of them, i hit upon the 'oww' joke and then it made sense to do all 9. I think it works really well and sells the joke even more with all the glasses:) 4 or 5 woulda been weaker for sure(although maybe it would have matched their team of people, making it poetic!).

I don't consider this a really finished piece at all though. I would have thickened up the lines a lot on the edges, added some more shadows in the background to pop the heads out, clean up the tail spikes, etc. probably another hour...