December B, 2004

Submitted for: Hawk
Character: Ben

It was Hawk and his artwork that first drew me to MAX, in the most random way. Being a Evangelion fan at the time, I was google image searching for pictures of Shinji to use on forum signatures. I was through about 3 pages of crappy quality, same-as-every-other-Evangelion-fan-site pictures, when I spotted something different, something high quality, something with a bit of depth and originality.

I then saw that this Shinji was different. Fan art, I sighed. I never use fanart in my signatures without the permission of the artist. It was a good picture, too good to let go, so I decided to do just that. I closed the google frame and went hunting through the website. It was then that I learnt that this Shinji was another artists original character, and that you could get your characters drawn for you in an exchange program. I hurried to update my website, got a better understanding of digital colouring through Hawk's tutorial, and joined in on the fun. I never did make that Shinji signature. I was too busy drawing other peoples characters!


I chose to draw Ben because he was awesome. I was originally going to draw Hawk's cartoon alter-ego, but that was too daunting to me at the time.

This time I drew and coloured the character in Flash, and I think it turned out pretty well. I finished the background in Photoshop and it is an homage to the picture that brought me here, with the green and black background and computer text.

It's a step up from the last two, I think, although Ben's hand looks like a spatula, and his hair is gray. I attribute that to the monitor I was using at the time, it had it's brightness/contrast settings on ultra-dark, and then the settings buttons were killed. Grrrr. When I drew this the hair was jet black I tell ya, jet black!


I forgot the tape on his arms, and I had to go back into flash to add those. Looks seamless enough though.

Just for comparisons sake, I might remake this one.


Hawk is the founder of MAX, which was originally hosted on his own website. In 2007 he partnered with Sam and moved MAX over to ComicDish.