SALVAGE

 Here is a very mildly interesting post about half-assed problem solving!

For this Magic:The Gathering card (titled "Silent Blade Oni"), I was to simply draw a cool-looking demon-ninja creature on a rooftop at night.  The drawing at the top is what I squeezed out - a pretty fun little piece with some cool details and I thought the angle worked really well.  Unfortunately, coincidentally, and almost creepily odd, the pose, angle, and composition were all but exactly the same as a sketch for a different card by a different artist which was turned in and approved before I sent in mine for approval!  Seriously, the similarities were crazy.  Anyhoos, the other dude's sketch had already been approved so my art director had no choice but to ask me to change the angle or the pose or both. 

While I won't hesitate to erase a drawing if I have an inkling of doubt about whether it works well, this was different in that I was pretty invested in the drawing.  I liked it.  I was already picturing how I was going to color and paint it.  So I went about finding a way to salvage as much of what I liked as I could in order to separate it from that other illustration.   First I flipped it horizontal-like.  Then I tilted the camera-angle which really shouldn't have worked on the figure at all if you think about it - but somehow it did (which I'm not sure says anything very good about my drawing here!).   I then redrew everything else around the figure.  And that is how you do shit.

The final piece ended up looking like THIS - though not quite as dark as it looks here.