You land on top of the tallest skyscraper in town. With your enhanced vision you can see across the whole city. Screaming citizens and blaring sirens grab your attention. There, near the old, abandoned toxic chemical plant is a giant slime monster attacking the city. Bullets are being absorbed into its gelatinous form. Entire buses are being covered by the giant blobs of goo that it's slinging. The situation is hopeless unless you intervene. Your first thoughts are, "Crud, I just had my costume dry cleaned."
So, this is about new art for an old card. In fact it's a regular card that you likely have in your collection, Cool Uniform. Back when I first got into this game, I noticed that some of the card art was....how should I say this...sub par. Nick was working with what he had and did a fantastic job with it. You really should appreciate how much work he has put into making this game possible. However, as an artist I decided I wanted to help out. I sent him a few snippets of my work and he asked me to join in the work to create new content for this game, both artistically and through writing (my profession is actually as an author). One card that stuck out to me that really could use a facelift was "Cool Uniform." It isn't terrible art, really, but it felt like it needed something a bit more stylish. It was, afterall, just a snip from a larger picture used in another part of the game. This power is a constant in the game, not one that will run out, thus I felt it could be something a little better. I set out to paint a picture that I would present to Nick to replace the card art. 
The art was both easy and difficult. It was easy since I was going for a basic pose. I didn't need to figure out some exciting, dynamic pose to go with a power the hero would be using. Instead I just needed him standing there, looking cool. However, I wanted it to really stand out, since it is all about the uniform. I took cues from the original art to make this. You might notice that the color scheme is the same, also uses a lot of straight lines for the variations in the colors. I wanted a flowing cape, the original had these odd shoulder capes that seemed out of place, so I put his cape draping over his shoulders. The face wrap was also a homage to the original. His face gave me some difficulties, first I went with what I thought looked like a general face, but it came out a bit...dopey looking. So, I went back to the drawing boards and decided on a serious, almost angry expression. He is on duty, not posing for pictures. Finally, as in the original, I wanted an industrial background. So, in a sense, I went for an upgrade to the original, not just an entirely new art.
special note: You might have noticed that my backgrounds for most of the art are rather simplistic. I use a basic impressionistic style of rendering for the background. This is a conscious choice, so to let the hero/power be the focus of the art.
I hope you like the art, it was fun to create.
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