Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

My interest in the Monkey King led to other facets of Chinese folk lore. I know this is a strange thing (above) to turn into a car. The 僵尸 (Jiāngshī) are kind of a mix between vampires and zombies. Now often dressed as iconic officials from the Qing dynasty simply because low-budget Hong Kong film companies had a surplus of these costumes, the Jiāngshī are rigid reanimated humans who hop wherever they go. They show up frequently in video games and old Chinese horror films, most of which are more laughable than terrifying.

The piece of paper flying through the air in front of the jiāngshī is a Taoist talisman or a death certificate. The jiāngshī remains inanimate until the certificaate is removed from its forehead.

You’ll notice the creepy fingers enveloping the tires and the fangs around the front window. The robe (yes, this vehicle wears a robe, nothing abnormal about that) the robe obscures the back tire which enabled me to draw a new horizontal tire to imply a hopping motion. It must have got one last good hop in before the talisman was placed. Original elements of the vehicle can still be seen because (believe it or not) this is a paint job not a redraw.

I have to confess, I hate hats on cars. That’s probably a weirdly specific thing to strongly dislike but it stems from the Hot Wheels Character Cars, the designs of which I usually admire… except when they just slap a hat on top and call it good. It feels like a cop out. See DC’s Penguin character car and Disney’s Woody car below.

Can’t stand em’! And yet, I couldn’t help but include a hat-like structure on the Jiāngshī car because it’s just so iconic. But it’s a small accent and doesn’t overpower the motif as a whole. It tears me up inside but it had to be done.

Next (below) is another unusual subject for a vehicle, that of Nezha from ancient Indian mythology. Nezha was incorporated into Chinese Buddhism by the Ming dynasty novel “Investiture of the Gods” written in the 16th century, which set him up as the son of General Jing Li and Lady Yin.

This design incorporates multiple aspects of his traditional attire and weaponry. Obviously, fire is a major component of his persona. The front wheels are patterned after the 風火輪 (Fenghuolun), flaming gold rings Nezha uses for fast travel and combat. The back wheel is the 乾坤圈 (Qiankun Quan), the Cosmic Ring, primarily used in combat along with the Fire-Tipped Spear seen in place of the “gun” if anyone can recall the original Jurassic Park vehicle design at this point. The whole design is enveloped by the extremely powerful silk “Huntian Ling” sash.

Incorporating fire was a fun new challenge and I sought to make the fires the only light source which I think really helped the fire effect. Unfortunately the shadows created by these multiple light sources caused some problems on the jade stone “headlights” making them look exactly like the face of SpongeBob SquarePants. It was so distracting, it HAD to be fixed. Thankfully, some extra shadows lessened the distraction.

Next we have some more Lego homages. That of the Lego Blacktron II sets from the 80s. I had a ton of these sets. Love them. I also had a lot of the M-Tron sets but I’ve not yet been inspired to pay homage to those as they are mostly just red in color. We’ll see.

I really love the transparent effects on the greenish yellowy pieces. It turned out well.

Of course we can’t have Lego Blacktron II without the Ice Planet sets (below). I had a tiny Lego set from this theme but I wanted so many more! Never happened. Ç’est la vie.

The large chainsaw looking piece is exactly that. The Ice Planet Lego sets don’t have these quite so large in relation to the rest of the sets but it’s such an iconic peice for the theme I wanted to prominently showcase it. Really happy with this design and you can still see the original vehicle! I love that!

Last of the Lego versions for now we have the Lego Pirate version (below). This is a complete redraw mainly because I ran out of templates and had to print more. I tried to keep the original vehicle visible as much as I could but implementing more and more Lego elements was a temptation I couldn’t resist. So this is COVERED with Lego effects!

It begged for a background. So I referred to the original box art for the Lego Pirate sets. The “floor” mimics an actual island Lego base plate. You can see it on the box art (below). I got the shark and the crocodile in there. I regret not putting a monkey on the rigging. This took FOREVER but I’m very happy with the results.

Finally, this one was for my dad. When he first bought his business it came with a pump truck, a tank built into the back of a classic International six-seater. That tank was painted like a roll of Life-Savers candy hence the name of the business “Drain-Savers”. My dad used to hand out little rolls of Life-Savers to curious on-lookers. I would get dropped off at school in this thing and my friends were so amazed to learn my dad was the Drain-Savers guy. My brother was less enthused at the prospect. We laugh about it now.

This design actually incorporates elements from the “Garfield” car AND the original Jurassic Park vehicle. I was amazed at how much of the old pump truck I could draw purely from memory. I used to climb all over the thing as a kid so I knew it well. The green was such a dark hue, it was hard to see some of the more intricate details I originally drew and some disappeared in the coloring process. Handles on the hood and some strange torched-off metal parts on the front bumper were a regrettable loss. Regardless, my dad was happy with it, though he insists there was never any purple on the tank. But what about grape!?! Can’t have Life-Savers without grape.

There shall be more vehicles. I still have so many ideas and I’m still fervently drawing. But I don’t currently have any more to showcase at the moment so this may be the end of weekly art posts. Once I get another batch out, I’ll post again but it might be a while. Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed these!