I wanted to make very personalised Christmas cards for three of my dear friends. This post covers one of three.
The friend I had in mind for this card used to play a lot of Dynasty Warriors with me and his favourite character was Ma Chao. In the game, Ma Chao would shout ‘for justice!’ So the idea came together that I would have the sentiment ‘for Christmas!’
The hard part was trying to draw Ma Chao. I had to work within my skills and I’ve done some training drawing Japanese stylized chibi characters in the past. So I gathered my old reference books and brushed up my skills and then went on the prowl online for a good Ma Chao reference. I found one I really liked that I thought would challenge me but be reasonable within my skills.
This is link to the reference art: http://www.zerochan.net/1428910
I sketched him out and when I was happy with the sketch (it took like entire night…), I made some photocopies. I wanted to colour it in with pencils but I didn’t want to ruin the original with a mistake. So I did about two or three test colouring-ins to find which colours I wanted to use on the original sketch.
With Ma Chao and his gallant steed sketched, coloured and cut out, I then got some A4 vanilla cardstock ready to put the card together.
I used my Martha Stewart Score Board to fold the card nicely in half. Ma Chao and his steed were quite large and so I needed a larger than normal size card to fit them on.
Being that he [Ma Chao] was drawn in a manga style I thought it’d be cool to have some action lines and I was flipping through my Christmas pattern papers and I found one I liked that I thought would be very suitable. It was in the Echo Park Christmas Cheer Collection and it is called Festive Stripes. Festive Stripes was so vibrant and busy though that Ma Chao became lost in the background so I needed something else behind him in order to keep the focus on Ma Chao.
I used a coordinating pattern paper in the same Echo Park Christmas Cheer Collection and it was just a plain red in the matching hue of the stripes. I cut that into a strip and placed that in the center of the stripes and placed Ma Chao on top.
I then needed to stamp out the sentiment. I used a Hero Arts lower case letter set (it’s all I had haha!) It was fun stamping the letters. I stamped them onto a scrap piece of vanilla cardstock and placed that at the bottom of the card.
The above picture isn’t actually the final product that is me just testing where everything is going to sit. It seems I omitted to take a final photograph or if I did I lost it. I used lots of foam squares to adhere Ma Chao and the sentiment down. I liked the idea of making the horse look like it was jumping over the sentiment strip. I used foam squares on top of foam squares around the horse and Ma Chao to really try and give the 3D effect of him jumping out of the card.
After that, it was a personalised Christmas message and New Years wish for my friend on the inside and it was all done!
Kelly's Art Table 