Its either feast or famine when it comes to the inspiration for some of these shows. One show I have struggled with creating content for is Gallery1988’s ‘Product Placement 2024’. The show’s theme is a bit on the broad side, as it entails paying homage to both real, and fake products from film, and television.
The first time I participated in the show, I panicked. I created what I thought was a decent illustration, but it felt like a rather hollow effort.
This time I wanted to make sure that, whatever my entry was, it felt more inspired.
I did take a little time brainstorming what I could make until something finally spoke to me. I had a short list, and almost everything on it was from an animated show, which was interesting. I looked it over, and decided that I wanted something obscure, but not unknown, which resulted in me choosing ‘Powdered Toast’, from ‘The Ren & Stimpy Show’ (1991-1996). I was considering ‘Log’, a more popular faux-mmerical featuring a piece of lumber as a children’s toy. The absurdity of it would not be lost on today’s generation, however the idea seemed too mainstream. I may return to it next time, who knows. My third option from this wellspring, was another product called ‘Don’t Whiz on The Electric Fence’.
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| Primary sketch and layout. |
Now if you’re unfamiliar with ‘Ren
& Stimpy’, or ‘Powdered Toast’, I would suggest you watch this for context. While the show primarily centers on ‘Ren Hoek’ a chihuahua, and ‘Stimpson ‘Stimpy’ J. Cat’ a manx cat. Now, what I didn’t tell you, was that the
product, comes from ‘Powdered Toast Man’, ‘America’s number one hero!’, who panders it to children and adults
alike. The product is literally a powder that comes from a can, which when used
becomes a whole piece of toast. In later episodes it’s revealed that ‘Powdered
Toast Man’ lives within the same world as ‘Ren & Stimpy’ (along with a cast
of other colorful characters), and even has an alter ego, ‘Pastor Toastman’.
With my selection made, I went further down the rabbit hole, trying to track down episodes that featured the ‘Powdered Toast’ commercial. Thankfully almost every series has a wiki that logs these things down to an almost science. I quickly checked the wiki for the show, and the attempted to watch the episodes featuring the vignette. At the time of this writing, the original show is available to stream via Paramount+, however due to a rights dispute, not all of them are available to watch. In fact several are missing. Several I needed. LOL. The show was so controversial at the time, as was it’s creator John Kricfalusi so I’m not really surprised.
While I was able to locate enough material, I did have to eventually turn to YouTube in order to gather more intel on the product itself, and rewatch the shorts.
I determined I was going to do an advert based on the product of the ‘Powdered Toast’, and looked at some old magazine ads from the 1950’-60’s, as this was the design aesthetic from the show (which was inspired by cartoons like the ‘Flintstones’, or ‘The Jetsons’). I then did research on fonts from that era as well to add some authenticity to the final image, as it was going to contain some text.
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| Inked layout with typography in place. |
I came across a handful of promising fonts, but ended up choosing Custard (Condensed), and Honey Script (Semi-Bold), for the final image. I had to hand vector the ‘Powdered Toast’ typography in Adobe Illustrator, as I could not determine what actual font was used for it (however it’s most likely a custom one). I would return to Illustrator a handful of times throughout the project to create some cleaner versions of a few items I drew in this piece, like the ‘Powdered Toast Man’ sparkles, and the PREEM-O diamonds.
The remainder of the image was created in Procreate on my iPad Pro. I took a different approach for this one as I had a better concept that was fully realized. This took a lot of the guess work out of the project, and I was able to get to work for quickly. I knew I wanted a green background, and a ‘yellowed’ paper edge, so I set to painting the background quickly, then began ‘sketching’ in my images. I ended up utilizing the reference from a later episode in the series in which ‘Powdered Toast Man’ is on the can of the product, as in the first commercial, it simply says the name without his image. I had to do some guess work on the visage of ‘Powdered Toast Man’, as his expression on the product was simply too…simple. The children I designed using visual inspiration from one of the commercials that appears later in the show. I wanted to pose them in a state of surprise when the ‘Powdered Toast’ can magically appears floating above their kitchen table.
After I finished the initial sketches, I went back in and ‘inked’ them before adjusting my layout to include the font. With everything in place, it was time to move on to the color process. I kept the palette relatively limited, and relied upon only a handful of colors, or related families. I also wanted to make sure and balance the composition by utilizing contrasting colors appropriately. In order to give it a more textured or vintage look, I used a few different brushes than I normally do. For the line work I used 6B Pencil, and the Studio/Script/Syrup brushes for the inking. For the color process I used the Oriental Brush, and the Noise Brush. In order to rough up the image, I used both the D’Entrecasteaux and Noise Brush as an eraser over some of the linework, and colored sections. It seemed to work out pretty well.
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| Final color. |
I then tried another experiment.
I typical never save the final draft from my iPad, but I figured in this case with multiple layers the Photoshop file was going to look ‘different’. I also wanted to see if there was any quality difference between the two files.
Much to my surprise (or as I suspected), the final flattened image look exactly as it did in Procreate, while the Adobe Photoshop file, needed a lot of work to get it presentable.
The final image from Procreate was in my opinion fine, and really didn’t need any adjustments. With that in mind I sent the image to the printer to get a proof. Imagine my shock when I picked up the image only days later to see it was completely perfect. I couldn’t believe it was as simple as that. In my defense, most images require some tweaking in Photoshop, be it contrast/saturation/brightness, or even a complete hue change. This one was simplistic enough that it didn’t need anything. I couldn’t be happier!
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| Final 11" X 17" image on 100lb Cover. |
I started the image on June 8th,
2024, and finished it on June 13th, 2024, clocking in around
eighteen (18) hours, and thirty-four (34) minutes. Most of the work was done on
my iPad, with some light editing in Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator.
The 11” x 17” image (printed on 100lb Cover, thank you SGX), was made for Gallery1988’s ‘Product Placement 2024’, a group show dedicated to works inspired by fictitious, and sometimes real, products found in movies, television, and other media, which opened July 19th, 2024. At this time the prints are exclusively available via the gallery, so please check their website for all remaining works related to the show including mine.
For more information, or to see a catalog of my other work, please visit my online store here.
You can also find me on various social media platforms below doing a multitude of other artistic things that include hand lettering, and the occasional sculpting, crafting or painting.
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