Three Stooges Card Set Artwork

Here's my process for some caricature art I did for RRPARKS' Cards "Chronicles of the Three Stooges" collectible card set a couple years ago. The assignment was a set of six cards depicted all of the stooges that were members of the comedy group throughout their entire history: Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, and Curly Joe DeRita. Below are some of the reference photos I went from:

The idea was to have them all physically beating on each other in a line so the cards would form a big picture when laid out side by side. Not just a panoramic scene, but a "Pain-O-Rama", if you will. Here was my rough sketch:

 Next step was to refine the sketches. I worked on the bodies and heads separately. Heads were first:

Curly, Shemp, Curly Joe and Joe Besser were fun and came out really nice. The references photos of them were perfect, good lighting, good resolution. Moe and Larry were more challenging, as I couldn't find really good photos of the expressions I was looking for. I had to piece together a few photos, using the angle from one, expression from another one, etc. Always difficult to do that sort of thing, but I was pretty pleased with them. Next were the bodies:

 I drew everything first, then scanned them into the computer and refined them in Photoshop. This way, I could tweek the size and placement of each character. Each card had to look good as a stand alone, but also had to line up perfectly with the cards on either side. Very little margin for error composition-wise, so this was the easiest way I could get all the elements aligned properly. Here's the final sketch with background and effects done in Photoshop.