This one has been on the ideas notebook for longer than I’m willing to admit. I’ve been looking for a spot in between commissions to work on this one and I’ve finally managed to fine one! The original idea doesn’t vary much from the end result. Movie Slate riding on the back of AirPon, as she goes “Yay! Danger Zone!”. The only thing that changed was AirPon’s expression. At first I made her legit upset and angry, but I realized that the expression wasn’t coming together with the rest of the drawing. So instead I made AirPon be done with absolutely everything. I couldn’t make AirPon upset, she’s too cute for me to do that to her.
 
“_Top Gun I’m sure it is, for many of you, one of the best action movies of all time, and perhaps one of the staple films that defined the 80’s. It’s almost impossible not to think about it when you think of when Tom Cruise’s career was starting. Did you know he did a movie with each of the Scott brothers in 1986? He did Top Gun with Tony Scott, and Legend with Ridley Scott. What an eclectic year for Tom Cruise, right? Well, despite me being born one year before this movie came out, I’ve never had a chance to watch the movie until recently, and good grief has it aged really badly. I think this is how other people feel when you recommend them to watch a movie you grew up with and they don’t think it’s all that special. If you like Top Gun and you enjoy it, then more power to you. It just doesn’t say anything special to me.
 
The original sketch I drew also had the line of clouds horizontal on the drawing, which as I was working on it made me realize it wasn’t giving it the feeling of flying. It wasn’t until I started checking reference pictures, to get a color palette for the shading, that I saw most of the shots of combat airplanes flying above the clouds have the horizon slanted, inclined to either left or right. I think it looks way better now. At least they look like they are flying and it looks less silly.