{"id":23701,"date":"2018-05-23T05:40:40","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T09:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=23701"},"modified":"2019-11-27T10:34:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T15:34:30","slug":"pink-zeppelin-the-vector-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2018\/05\/23\/pink-zeppelin-the-vector-version\/","title":{"rendered":"Pink Zeppelin – The Vector Version"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pink<\/a>IN THE FUTURE…<\/i> is how these things usually start, but this terrible tale takes place\u00a0IN THE PAST…<\/i><\/p>\n

A nuclear conflagration ended the world as we knew it in 1980.<\/em>\u00a0Hellfire rained from the sky leaving pitiful few to battle it out for survival with monstrous mutations and perversions of science in the radioactive wastelands of America’s Northeast.<\/p>\n

The loathsome creature above is Pink Zeppelin<\/i>\u00a0which was the horrifying result of a freak accident fusing two hapless high schoolers into an abomination that could not possibly exist —\u00a0yet it lives! <\/em>All it remembered from it’s past life was the arena-packing rock bands it loved. <\/em>Now it finds solace inside a Sound Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0in the ruins of a shopping mall in New Jersey. He\/they\/IT<\/i><\/b> jealously guard(s) the remains of that record store and the musical treasures within. After guns, ammunition and food, the most precious commodity in this hellscape<\/em> is vinyl records.<\/p>\n

I have drawn PZ<\/strong><\/em><\/a> a number of times with pencils and ink, but I decided to go digital and put Affinity’s <\/em>superlative suite of software to the test and do a vector version of my monster. There are some raster elements within courtesy of Affinity Photo<\/em>, but I tried to keep it vector<\/a> as much as possible.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I did most of the work on this one with a laptop perched in my lap (strangely enough) while I sat on a couch halfway watching mostly crappy or so-so television shows. If the shows are too good, I won’t pay attention to my work. That’s where Amazon Prime<\/em> on my Roku<\/a> comes in. Make no mistake, they do have a lot of quality programs, but they also have a deep library of crap. That’s where I live, and that’s what I have on as I cobble together the shapes and colors that will become my creatures.<\/p>\n

Pink Zeppelin<\/em> took a while to get together. At first, I was trying to mimic what I was doing in pencil<\/a>, but it got too bogged down in detail. I wanted to keep the vector work simple and keep the design in line with the other Monster Heads<\/a> I produced. I had to force myself to keep it simple as I arranged the shapes that formed the creature’s head.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sometimes I had to close the lid of my laptop to walk away for a break. Sometimes I would sketch out some rough ideas with pencil and paper considering the shapes that I would assemble into my character. I’d start fresh with a new document and attack my monster anew. Eventually I liked what was coming together.<\/p>\n

\"\"Usually, I make these things perfectly symmetrical, but I decided to abandon that notion as I progressed on the more brutish of the two heads. The hair flopping down over the eye is what sold me on this direction. Creatures in post-apocalyptic wastelands are not overly concerned with symmetry and perfect hair styles.<\/p>\n

\"\"Once the beastly head was figured out, it was time to work on the more human head. I’m not sure why I drew this creature with one monster head and one human head. My pencil did it!<\/em> It came out that way on my first drawing<\/a> of this creep and has remained that way. I always had it figured that the monster was like some of the guys I remember from high school who went to vocational school and were fanatically devoted to Led Zeppelin. The human guy was the more sensitive, pseudo intellectual type who probably did too many drugs and lost his mind when Pink Floyd’s The Wall<\/em> came out. He didn’t need no education,<\/em> but he did require copious amounts of weed.<\/em> I thought Pink<\/em> as I call him would be easy, but he took longer to work out than Zep<\/em> the monster.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9Joe <\/a>
\u00a9Joe Williams <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"\u00a9Joe <\/a>
\u00a9Joe Williams <\/div> <\/div>
\"\u00a9Joe <\/a>
\u00a9Joe Williams <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"\u00a9Joe <\/a>
\u00a9Joe Williams <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

After the heads were done, it was just a matter of arranging elements in a square layout similar to the other creatures created in Affinity Designer.<\/em> I don’t really have any dazzling insights on how I arrived at any of these decisions. I just played with shapes until I was happy with my two-headed guardian of the finest stash of vinyl in post-apocalyptic New Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IN THE FUTURE… is how these things usually start, but this terrible tale takes place\u00a0IN THE PAST… A nuclear conflagration ended the world as we knew it in 1980.\u00a0Hellfire rained from the sky leaving pitiful few to battle it out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":23706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,700,318],"tags":[3981,366,3465,3639,4057,17,8,312,27,3661,5,23,122,4396,354,3669,4081,742,3663,1034,3660],"class_list":["post-23701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-illustration","category-pixels-versus-pigment","category-technique","tag-affinitydesigner","tag-366","tag-affinity-designer","tag-affinity-photo","tag-atomic-warrior","tag-cartoon","tag-cartoons","tag-comic","tag-digital-illustration","tag-illustration","tag-joe-williams","tag-monster","tag-new-jersey","tag-nuclear-war","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-pink-zeppelin","tag-records","tag-sketch","tag-vector","tag-willceau"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Pink-zeppelin-splitscreen.jpg?fit=1000%2C625&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ed1x-6ah","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":21831,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2017\/03\/11\/which-one-is-pink\/","url_meta":{"origin":23701,"position":0},"title":"Which One is Pink?","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"March 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is sort of an addendum to my earlier post. It's the digital cherry on my analog sundae. This morning I was playing with a hand-drawn doodle featured in Rumble in the Record Store. I always meant to have a logo on my mutant monster's tee-shirt, but I wasn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "It Came From the Sketchbook"","block_context":{"text":"It Came From the Sketchbook","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Affinity-Designer-screenshot-PZ.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Affinity-Designer-screenshot-PZ.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Affinity-Designer-screenshot-PZ.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":21791,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2017\/03\/07\/atomic-warrior-v-pink-zeppelin\/","url_meta":{"origin":23701,"position":1},"title":"Atomic Warrior V Pink Zeppelin","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"March 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"More fun with Derwent's water soluble pencils and the Sketchbook from Heaven. The creature on the left is The Atomic Warrior which I first cooked up a couple of years ago as a homemade Halloween costume for my son. My original notion was \"What if Star Wars was made at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "It Came From the Sketchbook"","block_context":{"text":"It Came From the Sketchbook","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Atomic Warrior VS Pink Zeppelin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/586\/32396907973_91a71f495d_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/586\/32396907973_91a71f495d_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/586\/32396907973_91a71f495d_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":44919,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2025\/04\/16\/1980%e5%b9%b4%e4%bb%a3%e3%81%ae%e6%9d%b1%e4%ba%ac%e3%81%ae%e5%90%b8%e8%a1%80%e9%ac%bc\/","url_meta":{"origin":23701,"position":2},"title":"1980\u5e74\u4ee3\u306e\u6771\u4eac\u306e\u5438\u8840\u9b3c","author":"Joe","date":"April 16, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Tokyo Vampire Circa 1980s It seems that my series of Halloween Heads has started anew with the completion of a Japanese vampire on the heels of last week's Phantom of the Opera. Halloween Heads are illustrations of monsters I've created in the superlative vector art application Affinity Designer. Generally, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Halloween"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/halloween\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1980s-Tokyo-Vampire-final.jpg?fit=900%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1980s-Tokyo-Vampire-final.jpg?fit=900%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1980s-Tokyo-Vampire-final.jpg?fit=900%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1980s-Tokyo-Vampire-final.jpg?fit=900%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":21182,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2016\/10\/14\/i-count-on-affinity-designer\/","url_meta":{"origin":23701,"position":3},"title":"I COUNT on Affinity Designer","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"October 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a little Halloween doodle that I cooked up in my favorite vector art program Affinity Designer. Being that my son's school bus pickup time is just before dawn, I thought it appropriate to work on this icon of The Count! A couple of mornings before sunrise fiddling with shapes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Halloween"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/halloween\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Count in Affinity Designer","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/7461\/30022386700_6c104c7673_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/7461\/30022386700_6c104c7673_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/live.staticflickr.com\/7461\/30022386700_6c104c7673_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":25898,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2019\/10\/14\/the-witch\/","url_meta":{"origin":23701,"position":4},"title":"The Witch","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"October 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Another vector Halloween Head created in Affinity Designer.","rel":"","context":"In "Halloween"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/halloween\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Vector Witch","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-witch-3-AD.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-witch-3-AD.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-witch-3-AD.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":42704,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2024\/03\/19\/tuesday-digital-doodle-automaton-powers-on\/","url_meta":{"origin":23701,"position":5},"title":"Tuesday Digital Doodle \u2022 Automaton Powers On","author":"Joe","date":"March 19, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another vector doodle I did in Affinity Designer. In preparation for the occasional science fiction book cover I illustrate, I will play with metallic tones and mechanical shapes. I am figuring out how I may approach that starship or robotic marauder that may feature in a future novel,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Doodle Tuesday"","block_context":{"text":"Doodle Tuesday","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/doodle-tuesday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Automaton.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Automaton.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Automaton.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Automaton.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}