Brainiac 5 by Craig Rousseau

A few months after commissioning my first Brainiac 5 piece from Craig (also in this gallery), he opened his list again, with a mention that it might be his last time taking non-convention commissions for the rest of the year. That meant I had a dilemma to face: should I get a new character from the animated Legion and diversify my collection, or should I just get another Brainiac 5?

I knew it would be some time before I had another chance, so I went with the only sensible option - I asked Craig for another Brainiac 5, this time with his Season 2 design!

I think, out of all the commissions I've gotten from Craig, this one came out the very best. Craig nailed the artstyle of the show perfectly, and I love that the fairly static pose shows off every detail that he got just right. He even picked a slightly purple-er shade of paper for this one to reflect how Brainy's uniform goes from magenta to a darker purple between seasons.

Once again, the colours in this one are just out of this world. I think my favourite part is the highlights Craig put on the black section of Brainy's torso, which give it a sort of burnished metal texture, but I also still love how many different shades of yellow he used for Brainy's belt buckle and hair. Another fun detail you might not notice at first glance is that Craig used a pencil crayon that was veeeeery slightly lighter than the base paper to colour Brainy's uniform, letting the paper itself act as the shading. And this time, we get two slightly different shades of funky teal to act as highlights, instead of just one (you can really see the difference between them on Brainy's neck!).

I picked up Craig's pencil prelim for this piece, too, and in contrast to the other Brainy piece, where the prelim has him smiling but the finished art doesn't, I like that the opposite is true for this piece and its prelim. You can tell from the prelim that Craig knew exactly what he wanted this piece to look like from the get-go, and I think that comes across in how well it turned out!