2005's videogame-magazine Xmas "STEALTH ELF", pt.2!

Following up on last week's post, here's more from the 2005 Christmas feature I worked on for the videogame magazine GamePro, where former PSM art director (and designer of the Empowered logo!) Eugene Wang brought me on board to provide wacky illustrations for an article about giftgiving options for gamers.

The star of the piece was Santa's "Stealth Elf" (or "Stelf"? "Stealf"?), a tacticool cutie loosely homaging Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake. The main point of the article was ID'ing various types of gamers, and what the magazine recommended for each:

Note that the fine colors on the illo were done by the talented lads of the coloring studio Guru eFX.

UPDATE: For clarification of the image above, I reposted the piece's original rough:

Note that something must've gone terribly wrong with my first attempt at drawing her face for the final version's topmost panel, which sports a wholly different and seemingly quite inferior drawing than the original rough; then again, inability to translate a rough sketch int a finished drawing does happen from time to time, alas.

Enjoy one of the very few strip-format comics I've ever done:

With pencil-based original artwork drawn on linen-finish cardstock, no less (and colors by Guru eFX once again).

NEXT TIME ON "SANTA'S STEALTH ELF": Just before Christmas, we'll see the complete work stages for the article's main, full-page illo, possibly along with scans from the published piece, assuming I can dig up my lone comp copy of the magazine (and that's an optimistic assumption, alas).

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Unknown at this time, TBH, but something will be going up on the ol' "M/W/F+" posting schedule. (Emphasis on the "plus" part this month, as I plan to briefly revert to the ol' "5 days a week" format to finish off the last week of 2021 and cram in all the scheduled Distressed Damsels content for the $5+ tiers, Unnamed Robot Comic, Life Drawings and so on.)