Van Hyena

I'm baaaaaaack!

My summer hiatus on here lasted a bit longer than expected, since it took my school two weeks to get my laptop back to me. It was a true pain in the ass waiting for it, I won't lie. But now that I have it and I got Photoshop again, I'm back in business with my artwork.

Consider this drawing a loose sequel to 'Ed Van Halen'. I liked the idea of Ed playing guitar so much, that I wanted to expand on it. It eventually got to the point where I came up with how to put the entire Van Halen band into hyena form. (I need a life... ) I put Cheezi on vocals here, since he sounds the closest to Sammy Hagar to me. Initially I wanted to put Janja as David Lee Roth in this, but to me, Dave's era gets too much praise as it is. Don't get me wrong, I still love the early days of Van Halen, but I feel like nothing post-1984 gets enough love from anyone. So for that, I put the hyena equivalent of the Red (or should I say purple?) Rocker at the mic. Shenzi is their version of Michael Anthony, since she could probably pull off his backing vocals pretty well, and I just adore the thought of her playing bass for some reason. Now that I've drawn the whole band (or at least one lineup of it), they can finally share their hit songs with others: The Seventh Meal, Can't Stop Eatin' You, Hyenas Being, Dinner Walks In, Aftertaste, and revisiting Janja-era songs like Ain't Talkin' Bout Food, Leap, Feast the Night Away, and And the Ribcage Will Rock.    

Initially, I thought the lava background was overdoing it a little, and would make the picture come off as more hellish than I wanted. Van Halen is far from a Satanic-themed band, after all, and at first I didn't know how to do the background without making them look like Slayer or something. But after some trial and error, I figured having the Pride Lands in the background would work best. My best guess is that this is taking place somewhere on the borders between there and the Elephant Graveyard. After all, I'd imagine not many animals would show up if they had to go too deep into hyena territory.  

Let me know in the comments what you think!