Joint locking like cats & dogs

Here's a fun project I finished up last year for a local Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school looking to enhance their kids' "Kid-Jitsu" program. It was the head instructor's idea to give the students some fun Jiu-Jitsu related activities to do outside of class, and he contacted me to do some line art for a coloring book of cats and dogs beating (breaking, choking, hip-tossing) the snot out of each other. Kids love that stuff. I know I still do did, except I am was all about giant turtles doing Ninjutsu instead. Click on this post's title for a link to the school, and take a look at some examples below:






It's not too violent, right? Again to show where an idea might begin and might end, here are some of the original sketches that I thought were too cutesy and cartoonish. I figured the students (and the client) would appreciate the accuracy of the techniques more than Looney Tunes character design. It's hard to show joint expansion on rubbery limbs!

Alright, I guess that's it for today! Too much kid's stuff lately, next post will be at least a little more grown-up... Comic books, anyone?

-Kung Fu Mike