This is cropped from a bigger composition, which is taking too long and I should be working on something else and the only way I can get myself to leave this alone is to post this first. His hoodie is a lighter colour than in canon, but that's just me taking liberties with the design though I still wanted him to look like himself.

Here are my thoughts on the movie while I'm at it (some spoilers):

Something I notice looking at people's reactions to the movie is that quite a few people see the take on the characters as intended to be ironic, ie: taking innocent and kindly figures and giving them weapons for the novelty of it. It's not a cynical deconstruction the way Shrek was with fairy tales though, it's a pretty earnest take on the premise of what if these mythic figures existed and how they'd function.

The idea is getting to see what the real figures that inspired the stories we know about them are actually like, that those stories and songs are only a narrow representation of a much richer history. I love that concept! Along with the designs and ideas the production team came up with, it's so much fun to look through. The idea of keeping your sense of wonder of the world and what the Guardians represent is also something I'm particularly attracted to.

That said though, the movie fails in some of its execution. There were some very effective scenes, but the story was clunky in parts, especially the ending, and the pacing felt like it needed some space to breathe and let us enjoy the beautiful world they've created. Maybe it had too many things and not enough time to fully explore them all. I also wished they'd developed the emotional bits more than they did. Like when we see the flashback of Jack dying I felt like they glossed over how horrific that actually was, especially how it would effect his little sister, that could have made for some interesting character development. It didn't have to be anything too upsetting, but it could have found a nice balance between dark and tragic while still being hopeful by showing how bad things can be overcome, which would have served its message better. I still liked the movie more than I didn't, it could have been something amazing with some polish. I love the world and characters they've created and have a lot of faith in it. I want to see more done with it and was really happy to see the short comics by the concept artists they released and the ones done by *rufftoon Hope this isn't the last we'll see of it.



Saw someone reposted this on Tumblr the other day and it got 900ish notes, which explains where the traffic came from, so thanks to the people that came to look at it here. But anyway, RoTG is now no. 2 in the US box office~ So here's hoping it'll do well enough for Dreamworks to do another one.