.Pirate Redux.
Not long ago, I was thinking about this site and my intentions for it. You see, years ago, I made the decision to always keep all of my older work open to the public. Bear in mind, it goes against most folks' recommendations to keep embarassingly crappy work in your portfolio. But this site is not my portfolio. This site was originally called "The Jesterspawn Project" and has, from the beginning, been intended as a virtual measuring stick upon which I can gauge my improvement. The site will continue to grow along with me, but the old stuff will always be there as a reminder of where I've been. It's the same reason I leave all of my old comments unchanged, even though some of them contain outdated information about ex-girlfriends and things like that.

But anyway, it occurred to me that an even more visible sign of progress would be to go back and re-draw some of my older pictures at my current level of skill.

I've always liked my original "Pirate Chick" picture, even after I started seeing all of the flaws that I couldn't see back when I created it. So I figured it would make a good candidate for the first entry into my "Redux" series. Also, it is important to note that I didn't just want to re-draw the picture exactly as it appeared. I re-drew everything from scratch and decided to update the picture to a quasi-futuristic look and a more interesting composition, while still tipping my hat to the original at every opportunity. Without further ado, here is my new version. Hopefully in another five years I'll give you a new one that'll overshadow this one just as this one overshadows the first.

Oh, and here's a link to the original. I recommend a side-by-side comparison.