Originally, the robot was going to be used for an album cover for Lupe Fiasco's Fahrenheit 1/15 Part II: Revenge of the Nerds mixtape. The "official" album cover is this monstrosity:
Needless to say, I could not let this aggression stand, man. Especially when I have to look at it in my iTunes cover flow every time I want to listen to an otherwise good album. Lupe Fiasco has three Fahrenheit 1/15 mixtapes: the first, Part II: Revenge of the Nerds, and Part III: A Rhyming Ape. The album covers are all pretty bad.
I thought it would be a fun project to assign myself over winter break to remake the artwork in Illustrator as part of a series. I hadn't really decided on what Part I would look like, but Revenge of the Nerds would feature a robot MC stomping around an illustrated city and A Rhyming Ape, which is simply Fiasco rhyming over beats taken from the Gorillaz' Demon Days album, would feature King Kong, with mic in hand, terrorizing the city from the side of the Sears tower.* The idea was nerdy, but that's alright, because that's clearly a theme with Fiasco. Alas, I never got around to it though. No need to let the robot go to waste though.
Below is my original sketch that I traced in Illustrator.
And here's the final product.
I took the photo from the top floor of the Amsterdam public library (A place I've mentioned numerous times before on my blog). I haven't had the need to use Photoshop in a while, so this was kind of a refresher.
* Yes, I know that King Kong originally climbed up the Empire State Building, not the Sears Tower. But since Fiasco hails from a city in the Midwest, the best city in the whole wide, wide world (Chicago), I thought it was appropriate.
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