Charlie, a professional skier, broke his neck and back in a bad car crash. However, he survived and got back on the mountain / streets, tougher than ever. The idea for the design was based around Charlie's cheating death. He wanted a spine that transitioned into a dagger as well as a scythe coming across the top. He goes by the moniker Chuk.Town

Some of the first digital explorations. Messing around with textures primarily.

Both Charlie and I were not feeling the renders and agreed that we needed to illustrate this. Charlie also has personally been influenced much by 80s/90s skate culture. We chose to concentrate our inspiration search in 80s/90s skate art. I made an initial pen and paper sketch (left) and then refined in the computer. 

This was the first refined illustration. Charlie wanted to see both a black and a white version. I also played with changing up what was in the mouth - beads on the left, dripping rose on the right. Lastly, I wanted to add a rough outline on the white version.

I explored a LOT of options for background colors and patterns.